The ‘F1’ team on adapting some of the spirit of ‘Top Gun’ to Formula One film with Brad Pitt

By LINDSEY BAHR Associated Press Top Gun Maverick filmmaker Joseph Kosinski came to Formula One like a multitude of Americans Drive to Survive In that popular Netflix series he saw the feasible for a cinematic event full of immersive thrills the high stakes of the competitive racing world and the idea that your teammate could be your greatest rival I don t think there s any other sport that s quite like that Kosinski disclosed It s ripe for drama FILE Actors Brad Pitt left and Damson Idris appear on the grid before the British Formula One Grand Prix race at the Silverstone racetrack Silverstone England on July for the filming of F AP Photo Luca Bruno File The movies have loved car racing since their earliest days and the popularity of F has exploded in latest years Giving it the Top Gun restoration made sense But it would take nearly four years for that dream to become F which is speeding into movie theaters on June It was a complex operation that would involve unprecedented coordination with the league groundbreaking innovation in camera system and letting one of the biggest movie stars in the world Brad Pitt drive a real race car at miles an hour on film Several countless times Getting F on board Hollywood it turned out was a little easier to convince to make the film than the league By the time Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer approached them Pitt had already agreed to star and they d decided to go with Apple to help make the movie at the level they needed with the guarantee of a robust theatrical release which Warner Bros is handling Then came the Formula One meeting When you come in the first thing they think is you re going to make them look bad Bruckheimer explained I went through this with when I went to the Navy the first time on Top Gun FILE Actor Brad Pitt appears on the grid before the British Formula One Grand Prix race at the Silverstone racetrack Silverstone England on July AP Photo Luca Bruno File There were a large number of concerns About anything going wrong accidents and the question of the villain But the filmmakers explained this story wasn t about a villain It s a competition between two drivers a younger driver Damson Idris and an older driver Pitt trying to make him better Bruckheimer mentioned it took almost a year to get the league on board and then they had to go around to the individual teams to explain it to them as well But once everyone bought in they committed and opened their world to the filmmakers The amount of let s say conversations regarding things not related to the actual filmmaking has been massive just from a coordination point of view Kosinski commented But there s no way we could have made this film without that partnership with Formula One An image of actor Brad Pitt from the upcoming film F is reflected in an advertisement for Tom Cruise s new film Mission Impossible The Final Reckoning on the opening day of CinemaCon the official convention of Cinema United on Monday March at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas AP Photo Chris Pizzello Among the things they got to do Build a garage at the Grand Prix for their fictional crew Drive on the track during Grand Prix weekends in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators Put their Formula One cars on the track with the film s cars and drivers Have Pitt and Idris stand at the end of the national anthem in both Silverstone and Abu Dhabi And sit in on drivers meetings and technical briefings It was full-on integration of these two worlds coming together Kosinski mentioned There s no way the film could have happened or look like it does without that partnership I think you ll see the conclusion of that on screen because you couldn t recreate what we were able to capture by doing it for real We re going to need a smaller camera In true Top Gun spirit part of doing it for real meant trying to create the experience in the driver seat for the audience Seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton who was involved in the film from the earliest days described Kosinski that he d never seen a film that had really captured what it felt like to be in one of those cars These Formula One cars they deal in grams Kosinski mentioned Adding pounds of camera equipment works against the very thing you re trying to capture It became a technical engineering project for a year to figure out how to get very tiny cameras that are IMAX quality onto one of these cars Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton of Britain steers his car during the Formula One Saudi Arabian Grand Prix at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit in Jeddah Saudi Arabia Sunday April AP Photo Darko Bandic During Top Gun Maverick they had six Sony cameras inside the cockpit Here engineers were able to slim those down to about a quarter of the size he estimates a cm cube Panavision also developed a remote control that allowed director of photography Claudio Miranda to pivot the cameras left and right which they didn t have on Maverick They had camera mounts built into the cars and were able to run up to four at a time keeping the weight penalty to a minimum and the close-ups real Every time you see Brad or Damson s face they re really driving that car Kosinski disclosed It s not being driven for them And once it was go-time on the tracks it was a race against the clock It was a technical feat and an organizational feat Bruckheimer stated You get limited access and we d get in there between particular of their qualifying laps and have eight minutes to get on the track and off the track It s precision you can t be at nine minutes F driver Lewis Hamilton reacts during the official opening of the brand-new flagship Fanatics Collectibles store on Regent Street in London Friday April Bradley Collyer PA via AP When Hamilton first saw specific of their racing footage cut together Kosinski got a confidence boost He smiled and declared It looks fast Kosinski noted I was like Oh thank God If Lewis says that we re in a good place The Brad Pitt factor This movie needed an icon kind of at the center of it Kosinski mentioned It s a big complicated expensive film And I needed one of our you know top top movie stars Kosinski knew Pitt liked cars About a decade ago he Tom Cruise and Pitt literally developed a car movie that never came to be Plus he noted I just felt like it was a role that I reliably desired to see him play This image disclosed by Warner Bros Pictures shows Brad Pitt in a scene from F Warner Bros Pictures via AP The character is fictional driver named Sonny Hayes who was the greatest who never was A phenomenon in the s he was destined to be the next world champion before an accident at a Grand Prix ends his Formula One career Now he drives in every type of racing league you could imagine but not Formula Kosinski noted from Le Mans to swamp trucks He likes to challenge himself to a new racing league and master it but then he walks away The audience meets him driving the midnight shift at the Daytona hour race where he meets his old teammate and now Formula One gang owner Javier Bardem who asks him to come back to help them win one race to save them from being sold It s a story about a last place squad a group of underdogs and Sonny Hayes in his later years having one more chance to do something he was never able to which is win a race in F Kosinski explained After the pitch they went to the racetrack with Hamilton and Pitt was hooked Pitt trained for three months before cameras started rolling to get used to the physical demands of the precision vehicles He and his co-star really drove the cars at speeds up to mph and sometimes in front of a couple hundred thousand people The happiest day was when they disclosed OK it s a wrap on driving and he Brad climbed out of the car Bruckheimer reported That was the best day for me because it is dangerous it really is The perfect summer blockbuster The film everyone has acknowledged was enormously expensive They had the advantage of advertising on the cars which helped offset specific of the costs but the operation was akin to building a real F gang Bruckheimer revealed They built six cars which they transported all around the world along with production It s like an army exercise moving vast groups of people and machinery around the world Bruckheimer revealed Related Articles Nicolas Cage catches surreal wave in The Surfer Hollywood gears up for hot movie summer Chlo Sevigny rides career wave with Bonjour Tristesse Column years ago Monty Python and the Holy Grail revealed us what comedy necessities and doesn t Another Simple Favor sticks to what mostly works But it was much less than the million figure going around both Kosinski and Bruckheimer explained It s expensive don t get me wrong It s an expensive movie But it was substantially lower than that number Bruckheimer announced Hollywood is a very competitive place and our friends sometimes inflate our budgets to make them look better The biggest question is whether audiences will turn out in blockbuster numbers So far test scores have been very high across genders And they promise you don t need to be an expert or even a fan of the sport to enjoy the film which will teach you everything you need to know It s emotional it s exciting it has humor It s got great music with a Hans Zimmer result and a bunch of phenomenal artists Bruckheimer explained We hope it s a perfect summer movie