Any great sports movie needs a great antagonist — and that’s just what the top brass at Formula One were afraid of.
F1: The Movie is returning to IMAX this weekend, and ahead of this return, producer Jerry Bruckheimer tells Entertainment Weekly that he and director Joseph Kosinski had to convince the powers that be at Formula One that they wouldn’t villainize any of the actual teams in competition.
Bruckheimer had made a professional racing film before, 1990’s Days of Thunder, and on the surface, he found working with NASCAR and Formula One to be pretty similar.
“They both leaned in,” he says. “They were very cooperative. They gave us access to their tracks, their drivers. They were fantastic partners to work with. You go through a period of they feel you out, they want to see if you’re going to hurt their sport. They want to see what you’re actually talking about.”
Scott Garfield / Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures / Apple Original Films
Damson Idris as Joshua Pearce in ‘F1: The Movie’
However, Bruckheimer says that it took a bit more to convince the folks at Formula One. “There were 10 teams we were dealing with, and they were reticent that one team was going to be the villain,” he explains. “Considering that Mercedes built our car, and Lewis Hamilton is a producing partner, they were for sure going to think that Red Bull was going to be the villain because they had a real competition that season between the two teams.”
But once Kosinski showed them what he had in mind, they were off to the races. “We showed them reels,” Bruckheimer says. “Joe put together a reel and showed how we were going to put our car in one of their races. He actually did it, and they showed it to all the drivers and all the team principals.
“Then we had F1 read the script, and they knew that the drama was going to be between our two drivers, not between any of their teams,” he continues. “So that’s how we got to a point where they were much more comfortable. We’re friends with all those teams now. The teams love the movie. The drivers love it. They see what it’s doing for the sport.”
Scott Garfield / Courtesy Warner Bros Pictures / Apple Original Films
Director Joseph Kosinski and Brad Pitt on the set of ‘F1’
The nature of working with NASCAR and Formula One wasn’t the only similarity Bruckheimer experienced. Extraordinarily, this is the first time Bruckheimer has worked with actor Brad Pitt, but he’s worked with another major movie star of the same ilk many times — Days of Thunder star Tom Cruise.
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“They’re very similar in the way that they really want to make a phenomenal movie,” the producer says. “They’re all in. They’re in on the script. They’re in on the casting with you. They’re real value-added because they come from a different perspective than what we come from, from an acting perspective.
“I’ve worked with actors that just want to go home,” Bruckheimer continues. “They’re done. You know, ‘When are we finished?’ And then you have some people like Brad and Tom that really want to lean in and stay as long as it takes to make the movie as good as possible.”
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