Formula 1 has high expectations for the potential of its forthcoming film which Lewis Hamilton and Brad Pitt are involved in.
The as-yet-untitled feature, production of which is due to begin this year, involves some of the creatives behind last year’s successful ‘Top Gun: Maverick’. They include director Joseph Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
F1’s Netflix series Drive to Survive has won praise for attracting new viewers to the sport since its launch five years ago. However Liberty Media president and CEO Greg Maffei said he expects the forthcoming film to have a much greater impact, comparing it to the forthcoming Las Vegas Grand Prix.
“This movie, kind of like Vegas, is going to be a whole other level,” Maffei told a Liberty Media investor Q&A in Las Vegas yesterday. “As much as Drive to Survive is enormous to a lot of people in this room and a lot of people around the world, I still go places and people say, ‘Huh?’
“Its audience is not that big. It may be big among this group, but it’s not that big. A Brad Pitt movie with Lewis Hamilton consulting and with Bruckheimer and with the director from Top Gun Maverick…
“We’ve already seen some of what they’re going to do and how they’re going to skin these cars. They took the technology from Top Gun. It’s going to be amazing.”
Maffei said F1 is aware it needs to begin looking beyond Drive to Survive for potential sources of new viewers. “The Simpsons has gone on for [over] 20 years, but there aren’t that many shows that were on that long,” he said.
“Drive to Survive is wonderful. But we cannot rely on Drive to Survive to be our only promotion vehicle forever. You’ve got to keep it fresh. Change the game.
“That’s one of the things I’d like to think we’ve done with the team entering Formula 1, credit to Stefano [Domenicali, CEO]. What we’ve done more recently around other kinds of Instagram and TikTok and the like, we’re keeping it fresh and different.”
Hamilton has previously said the film will be “the best racing movie that’s ever existed.”
