Brad Pitt is experiencing one of the biggest hits of his career with F1: The Movie. The Formula 1 racing movie directed by Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun: Maverick) arrived in the heat of the summer season, with Apple Studios having hopes that the movie would prove to be the type of cinematic event that pulled in strong interest.

With Brad Pitt’s real Formula 1 driving and the thrilling race sequences that unfold, F1 has proven to be a big hit for everyone involved. The movie has racked up a worldwide box office total of $397 million, which is enough to be the eighth highest-grossing movie of 2025 to this point. It’s even Pitt’s sixth highest-grossing movie of his career overall.

This type of success is nothing new for Pitt. He’s headlined plenty of major box office hits and remains a bankable summer lead. While F1‘s box office may still be small in comparison to Top Gun: Maverick, the film has filled a similar void for audiences by emerging as a must-see vehicle-based action blockbuster headlined by a true A-list movie star.

That’s why it always made some sense that Apple would bet big on F1 in this way. The reported $200 million budget – some suggest it is as high as $300 million, but Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer denied that – made the film a slightly riskier box office play for the studio, even in light of Pitt and Kosinski’s prior successes.

F1: The Movie Is Apple’s First True Box Office Hit

It Came At The Perfect Time

Since Brad Pitt and Joseph Kosinski have had various hit films before, Apple is the biggest winner to come from F1‘s box office success. Over the last half-decade, Apple Studios has been developing and acquiring various film projects. While most went directly to Apple TV+ at first, others have attempted theatrical releases in recent years.

Releasing big-budget movies of various genres has been hit or miss for Apple. Killers of the Flower Moon made $158 million at the worldwide box office, which was viewed as a win for Martin Scorsese’s over-three-hour crime drama starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro.

Ridley Scott built on this roadmap with Napoleon, as his Joaquin Phoenix-led war biopic made $221 million worldwide. Apple followed up another solid performer with Matthew Vaughn’s action spy comedy Argylle, which topped out at $96 million worldwide despite major stars like Bryce Dallas Howard and Henry Cavill being attached. Next, Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum’s space race comedy Fly Me To The Moon only made $42 million.

While some of those box office totals seem respectable, Killers of the Flower Moon, Napoleon, and Argylle carried budgets of over $200 million; Fly Me To The Moon reportedly cost $100 million. None of these movies made 2.5x their budgets, which is normally the line to clear to be considered a box office success. Apple’s expectation for these films to do well on streaming offsets some of the usual losses.

Yet, that didn’t stop the run of average to poor box office performances from scaring Apple. Reports quickly surfaced amid this streak that the studio was considering scaling back on its movie output and theatrical distribution plans. This included taking away wide theatrical releases from several films, including Brad Pitt and George Clooney’s Wolfs.

F1 is the first Apple movie to get a wide theatrical release since all of this, and that makes its performance all the more notable. Pitt’s racing film is easily Apple’s highest-grossing movie and could even hit the $500 million milestone before it’s out of theaters. There’s no other way to look at F1 other than as the studio’s first undisputed box office hit.

F1’s Success Should Encourage Apple To Keep Releasing Their Movies In Theaters

More Hits Can Come Now

Now that Apple has found some major success in theaters, the hope is that F1 will encourage the studio to continue utilizing the big screen format for major releases. Whereas the studio could have completely ruled out theatrical releases for fuuture films if F1 bombed, the sizable and quantifiable success should be seen as a sign to do more.

This is not to say that Apple should completely pivot to releasing all of its movies exclusively in theaters first. If there are тιтles with major star power in a genre that has a proven track record at the box office, it would be foolish to ignore a wide theatrical release. Those types of movies can give Apple more hits like F1.

Apple has a few different upcoming movies that could fit this mold. Ryan Reynolds has a new action-adventure movie from the Game Night directors that could do well in theaters. Similarly, John Cena’s Matchbox movie would make sense as a theatrical play for Mattel’s property. Even Matthew McConaughey’s The Lost Bus could be a strong performer based on its true story.

A theatrical release is also ᴀssured if F1: The Movie‘s sequel does happen. Apple would be leaving hundreds of millions of dollars on the table by making any other decision if the follow-up gains traction.

It’s unfortunately probably too late to change plans for Denzel Washington and Spike Lee’s new crime thriller Highest 2 Lowest, which has a limited two-week theatrical run starting next month before dropping on streaming. It also would be strange to move Mark Wahlberg’s The Family Plan 2 to theaters when the first movie was a streaming hit only.

Ultimately, Apple should use F1: The Movie has the beginning of a new era for the studio. Hollywood could use more crowd-pleasing blockbusters like this that audiences want to see in theaters.