After making some noise around the Formula 1 paddock for about a year and a half now, the Brad Pitt movie about F1 finally has a release date (summer 2025) and a title. They have creatively titled this movie about F1…. “F1”. Maybe not the most imaginative title, but it is good to see Formula 1 represented on the big screen again. Because there has been a shocking lack of F1 in Hollywood productions. In fact, all of racing has struggled to really get a foothold in the industry.
The Golden Age
During the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, Hollywood actually had somewhat of an affinity for racing movies. James Dean, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen made names for themselves as handsome men driving very fast vehicles, and there were plenty of movies willing to accommodate that. It also helped that during this time Americans did fairly well in Formula 1, so there was a lot of interest in racing. Even Elvis Presley made a couple of racing movies during these years, with plenty of singing in it of course.
The biggest titles during this period are without a doubt Le Mans (1971), about Le Mans, and Grand Prix (1966), about Grand Prix racing. Yeah, titles weren’t exactly creative then either. Le Mans starred Steve McQueen and used actual footage of the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans to tell its story. McQueen worked with F1 champion Jackie Stewart in preparation for the role and actually drove some endurance races himself as well. Fun fact: the film was supposed to use Ferrari racecars, but Enzo Ferrari ultimately refused to do so because the script said that the Porsche team would win.
Grand Prix meanwhile stars James Garner as a fictional F1 driver and details his rivalry with three other drivers throughout a fictionalized version of the 1966 F1 season. Like Le Mans, Grand Prix also used footage from actual races, complemented with material shot on real life tracks and helped by the actual F1 teams. Bruce McLaren and F1 champion Phil Hill even drove camera cars to shoot additional footage for the fictional races. They didn't get that cooperation easily though: Ferrari first wanted to approve the quality of the production (and the storyline of course) before cooperating, and only after that did the other teams agree.
Top: Steve McQueen in Le Mans (1971).
Bottom: James Garner in Grand Prix (1966).
It really was a golden age for racing movies. But all that came to a grinding halt in 1977, with the movie Bobby Deerfield. On paper, it had everything going for it. The movie was directed by Sydney Pollack, who would later make Oscar winners Out of Africa and The Reader. Headlining the film was Al Pacino, arguably the highest rated actor in Hollywood at the time after making the first two Godfather movies. There was even extra interest in F1 racing in America given that American Mario Andretti was setting the track alight in Formula 1. But the movie was a terrible flop. There was absolutely no dramatic tension, the story was flat-out boring, and the racing was only a sidenote to the romantic storyline. Because that’s what people want to see in a racing movie: off-track stuff.
The Dark Ages
After that, there wasn’t really much to write home about as far as racing movies went. In fact, for most of the next thirty years, there were only movies that were somewhat vaguely related to the concept of racing. There were a couple of lackluster drag racing movies (no, not the RuPaul kind). There was the Herbie franchise, about a sentient Volkswagen beetle, which is actually pretty entertaining. There was a kinda weird Halle Berry movie about a solar car challenge. There was the amazing Cars franchise from Pixar. There was Speed Racer, in 2008. And of course, the action movie franchise The Fast and the Furious, which, believe it or not, at one point used to be about street racing.
In this period, there were some movies about American racing series though, because America. The 1990 movie Days of Thunder, starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, is about a young upstart hoping to make it in NASCAR. It’s a pretty good movie, and the racing scenes are especially fun to watch.
Michael Schumacher as chariot racer "Schumix" in Asterix and the Olympic Games.
NASCAR was also the central point of focus for Will Ferrell’s Talladega Nights, which I still think is one of his best movies alongside Anchorman. The comedy follows Ricky Bobby (Ferrell) as he rises to the top of the competition. And then there is the absolutely terrible Driven, starring Sylvester Stallone, about the American CART series. It’s a bad movie and nobody should watch it, and I won’t dignify it with any further words in this article.
As far as F1 goes however, we had to settle for some scraps. The Monaco Grand Prix made an appearance in the Marvel film Iron Man 2, a couple of racing drivers made voice cameos in Cars 2, and Michael Schumacher did an absolutely incredible bit as "Schumix" in Asterix and the Olympic Games. But as far as feature length movies went? Nothing.
A racing Renaissance
But that changed in 2013. Director Ron Howard, known for The Da Vinci Code and Apollo 13, puts together a script about the amazing rivalry between F1 legends Niki Lauda and James Hunt. The movie details their title fights, their friendship, Lauda’s horrific accident, and much more. Rush hit theaters in September 2013 and it. is. incredible.
Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl did an amazing job playing the two drivers. The cars are perfect replicas. The racing is thrilling without it being over the top. The music, the cinematography, everything is just perfect.
And that gives the sign for a new Renaissance in racing movies. Ford v Ferrari comes out in 2019, with Matt Damon and Christian Bale in the lead. It tells the true story of the titanic battles between Ford and Ferrari in the Le Mans races of the 1960’s, with legendary car designer Carroll Shelby trying to bring Ford its highly desired victory. Then, in 2023, came Gran Turismo, the true (albeit slightly dramatized) story of Jann Mardenborough, who became a professional racing driver after playing the Gran Turismo video game. Is the movie just a giant marketing vessel by Nissan and Sony? Absolutely. Is it still a great movie? Oh you better believe it.
Following shortly after that came Ferrari, with Adam Driver starring as "Il Commendatore" himself, Enzo Ferrari. It’s not as much of a racing movie as the previous three, since it’s mostly about Enzo’s personal life. However all of the movie builds up to the legendary Mille Miglia of 1957, where Ferrari’s cars would grace the track at the thousand mile race through the Italian countryside. The racing scenes in it are great, and it’s just an amazing sight to see those old-fashioned Ferrari cars adorn the Tuscan hills.
And now the crowning achievement. F1, with an all-star team behind it. Brad Pitt in the lead role, Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski is directing it, and legendary producer Jerry Bruckheimer (known for among others the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) is leading the production on it. They even shot parts of the movie on-track at Silverstone and have all the F1 teams cooperating with the production. Let’s hope that it makes good on the promises, because we fans deserve a good Hollywood movie about Formula 1.
The poster for Brad Pitt's new F1 movie.