Photo: Instagram / Brad Pitt Official
Despite what you may have read online a couple of weeks ago, no, Brad Pitt is not retiring from acting. With two new Apple Original Films productions in the pipeline and another action flick opening in theaters right now, he’s actually riding the wave.
Of these new and upcoming films, one in particular is of high interest to us: an unnamed Formula One project for which Apple is reportedly paying Pitt a $30 million salary just to star in it. Confirmed last month but rumored as early as January 2022, the project is still shrouded in secrecy – so much of it that it doesn’t even have a tentative release date.
British tabloid The Sun reports that pre-production work is underway, with Pitt “hiring” Formula One champ Lewis Hamilton as his personal coach on the film set. Hamilton will also serve as consultant, but the report makes it sound like his job is to teach “the Hollywood A-lister all he needs to know about motorsport, including getting to grips with a 200mph-plus F1 car.”
“This is one of those films where everything just seems to be in the right place at the right time,” an insider familiar with the situation says. “F1 is obviously huge, but Brad is totally the right man for this role. Lewis is excited at the thought of a new experience. It’s perfect. They’re all so up for it.”
While The Sun has broken insider stories of the kind before (mostly regarding upcoming stunts by Tom Cruise in either Mission: Impossible or the Top Gun sequel), this is probably not one of those cases. That Hamilton was involved in the project has been known since last month, when Apple confirmed the deal: he is credited as producer, alongside Brad Pitt’s Plan B, Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joseph Kosinski. Presumably, that producer credit included consultancy work on his part, though initial reports claimed he would co-star.
As it happens, Pitt and Kosinski had paired before in view of bringing a racing movie to the big screen. Go Like Hell aimed to tell Carroll Shelby’s story with Pitt as lead, but the project fell apart – and that bit of Shelby’s story was then told in James Gold’s Ford v Ferrari with Matt Damon’s help.
Kosinski is now coming off the insanely successful Top Gun: Maverick, while Pitt is still doing promo work for the action flick Bullet Train. Not many details about the upcoming F1 movie are known, except for the brief synopsis that calls for Pitt’s retired racer to come out of retirement to mentor an up-and-coming star, which puts him behind the wheel and back on the track again.
British tabloid The Sun reports that pre-production work is underway, with Pitt “hiring” Formula One champ Lewis Hamilton as his personal coach on the film set. Hamilton will also serve as consultant, but the report makes it sound like his job is to teach “the Hollywood A-lister all he needs to know about motorsport, including getting to grips with a 200mph-plus F1 car.”
“This is one of those films where everything just seems to be in the right place at the right time,” an insider familiar with the situation says. “F1 is obviously huge, but Brad is totally the right man for this role. Lewis is excited at the thought of a new experience. It’s perfect. They’re all so up for it.”
While The Sun has broken insider stories of the kind before (mostly regarding upcoming stunts by Tom Cruise in either Mission: Impossible or the Top Gun sequel), this is probably not one of those cases. That Hamilton was involved in the project has been known since last month, when Apple confirmed the deal: he is credited as producer, alongside Brad Pitt’s Plan B, Jerry Bruckheimer and director Joseph Kosinski. Presumably, that producer credit included consultancy work on his part, though initial reports claimed he would co-star.
As it happens, Pitt and Kosinski had paired before in view of bringing a racing movie to the big screen. Go Like Hell aimed to tell Carroll Shelby’s story with Pitt as lead, but the project fell apart – and that bit of Shelby’s story was then told in James Gold’s Ford v Ferrari with Matt Damon’s help.
Kosinski is now coming off the insanely successful Top Gun: Maverick, while Pitt is still doing promo work for the action flick Bullet Train. Not many details about the upcoming F1 movie are known, except for the brief synopsis that calls for Pitt’s retired racer to come out of retirement to mentor an up-and-coming star, which puts him behind the wheel and back on the track again.
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