By Nell Geraets
On Monday, the first trailer for F1, which stars Brad Pitt as a Formula 1 driver returning to the sport to help mentor a younger teammate, was released online. Co-produced by seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton and filmed in part at actual grand prix events, it’s the latest in a spate of films acting as love letters to motorcar sports.
Over the past five years there have been three feature films and several straight-to-streaming flicks. So, what’s driving their popularity and are they revving up audiences?
From Ford v Ferrari to Gran Turismo and F1, car racing movies have revved up over the past few years.Credit: Compiled by Bethany Rae.
Car racing movies have been around since the advent of Hollywood, but with John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film Grand Prix picking up three Academy Awards and raking it at the box office, studios knew they had a format that worked. Racing films like Le Mans, Days of Thunder and Rush have attracted critical and commercial success, but the sheer volume of movies being released that focus on racing – particularly Formula 1 – has certainly accelerated.
The current boom started in 2019 with James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari. Featuring Matt Damon and Christian Bale, it chronicles Ford’s attempt to design a racing car capable of beating Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans contest. The movie received decent-to-glowing reviews, described by this masthead as a “seductive blast from the past”. It grossed over $332 million globally.
The subgenre’s comeback shifted into higher gear last year with Gran Turismo. Starring Saltburn’s Archie Madekwe as a gamer who begins training as an elite F1 driver, it came hot on the heels of the Barbenheimer phenomenon, which dominated the box office into August (when Gran Turismo landed). However, the underdog story still managed to gross about $174 million globally on the back of a reported $88 million budget.
Streaming services also jumped on the bandwagon, releasing films such as Overhaul (2023) and Race for Glory: Audi vs Lancia (2024), the former of which spent three weeks on Netflix’s global top 10 non-English films chart.
Not every recent release has performed well, however. Michael Mann’s Ferrari (2024), an exploration of driver-turned-tycoon Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver) as he prepares his racing team for Italy’s Mille Miglia in the 1950s, bombed at the box office, grossing only about $60 million worldwide. Some critics argued it simply didn’t include enough racetrack drama.
The lesson could be that it’s actual racing that attracts audiences, a phenomenon that is probably the result of Netflix’s massively successful Drive to Survive docuseries. Productions like these, which combine reality TV with documentary, managed to convince those who knew nothing about car racing to care about Formula 1. A 2022 Nielsen report showed the sport gained 10 per cent more US fans between 2019 and 2022.
Judging from the trailer, F1 contains plenty of high-speed racing. That, plus the star power of Brad Pitt, means it’s probably more likely to replicate the success of Ford v Ferrari, rather than crash and burn like Ferrari. We’ll find out when it’s released in 2025.
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