Actors and writers strike puts brakes on Brad Pitt’s Formula One film
Pitt's film stuck in the pits
Brad Pitt’s plan to become the 21st century equivalent of Steve McQueen – by making his own Formula One film – has come to a tyre-screeching halt in the face of the strike by Hollywood’s actors and writers.
Pitt’s film — as yet untitled — follows the fortunes of the fictional APX F1 team, which recalls retired racer Sonny Hayes (played by Pitt) to the team. His job is to guide new young hot-shoe played by Damson Idris, who has been seen in the likes of the Black Mirror series on Netflix. Oscar-winner Javier Bardem plays the team’s manager.
Or at least he will once production re-starts. Right now, as with so many films and television programmes, the production has been shut down until Hollywood’s actors and writers end their strike.
Hollywood strike partly because of AI
The strike has been brought about by a combination of low pay for writers and plans by the big film studios to use more artificial intelligence and digital performances. Actors were facing the prospect of being paid for one day’s work in which their faces and bodies would be scanned, allowing studios to use that data in perpetuity, without ever paying the actor again.
Other issues include the payment of residual fees for films and television shows being constantly shown on streaming services. The studios have publicly claimed that they will ‘starve out’ the actors and writers, but with heavyweights such as George Clooney and Margot Robbie out on strike, and big-budget productions brought to a halt, the studios will be losing money, and fast. The Guardian has warned of an ‘entertainment desert’ until the strike is resolved, with major productions such as The Last Of Us, Gladiator 2, Mission: Impossible 8 and Deadpool 3 all brought to a halt.
Until now, Pitt and director Joseph Kosinski (who directed the billion-dollar box office smash Top Gun: Maverick) had been aiming for accuracy, and not merely content with following the F1 season around, the movie’s APX team actually showed up on the grid at the recent British Grand Prix. Using converted Formula 2 cars provided by the famed Carlin racing team, the production was allowed to use real pit garages, to take part in a dummy grid session and to run its cars in between real racing sessions. F1 had thrown the doors fully open, with the sport’s CEO, ex-Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali, saying that the film has the chance to provide the same sort of publicity for the sport as Netflix’s Drive To Survive documentary series.
Brad Pitt at the British Grand Prix
For his part, Pitt says that he’s been having “the best time of my life” making the film. The Hollywood superstar told Sky Sports’ Martin Brundle, “I’m a little giddy right now, I’ve got to say. And it’s just great to be here, man. We’re just having such a laugh, such a laugh. All the teams have opened their doors for us, the FIA has been really helpful. And Stefano, everyone has just been really, really amazing, that we can do this. And it’s going to be really good.”
Pitt says that his character would have raced in F1 in the 1990s, but retired following a terrible crash. His friend and team manager, played by Bardem, convinces him to return to the sport to help the APX team languishing at the back of the grid.
The film is being produced by Dawn Apollo Films, which counts no less than Lewis Hamilton as one of its backers.
Will Pitt’s film be a good one?
Assuming that, in all this turmoil, Pitt’s film gets back into gear, does it stand a chance of being a good racing movie? The history of such films is mixed. John Frankenheimer’s 1967 Grand Prix featured amazing footage, having followed the Grand Prix season throughout 1966, but the soap-opera plot involving a love triangle between James Garner, Yves Montand and Eva Marie Saint was pretty dull.
McQueen’s 1971 epic, Le Mans, again featured incredible footage — filmed at the 1970 race as well as bespoke filming days on the track, including drivers such as Derek Bell and David Piper (who lost part of his leg in a crash during filming) — but equally suffered from a pedestrian plot.
Better — if bombastic — was Tom Cruise’s 1990 Days Of Thunder, directed by the late, great Tony Scott. Sylvester Stallone’s Driven, from 2001, was less good. In fact it was dreadful, and not helped by a late switch to IndyCar racing having begun life as an F1 film, which saw Stallone and his production team shadowing F1 racing for a time.
Ron Howard upped the racing film ante with 2013’s Rush, a biopic that followed the dramatic 1976 F1 season, and featured Chris Hemsworth as James Hunt and Daniel Bruhl as Niki Lauda. That was raised again with the brilliant Le Mans ’66 (also known as Ford vs Ferrari) from 2019, in which Matt Damon as the great Carroll Shelby, and Christian Bale as the unsung hero Ken Miles, take on the might of Ferrari at Le Mans.
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