Apple Original Films has emerged as the highest bidder for Brad Pitt’s upcoming movie about Formula One racing.
Joseph Kosinski, who just steered “Top Gun: Maverick” to blockbuster success, is directing the yet-to-be-titled film, which will be produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment and seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton.
Brad Pitt is playing a driver who comes out of retirement to compete alongside a rookie driver and the titans of the sport. Ehren Kruger, one of the three screenwriters on “Top Gun: Maverick,” is responsible for penning the screenplay.
Additional producers are Kosinski and Chad Oman of Jerry Bruckheimer Films. Copper CEO Penni Thow serves as executive producer.
This marks Apple Studios’ second collaboration with Pitt and Plan B Entertainment. They are also working on an untitled film in which Jon Watts (“Spider-Man: No Way Home”) is directing and Pitt and George Clooney are starring as two lone-wolf fixers assigned to the same job.
Apple Original Films, which became the first streaming service to win the Oscar for best picture for “CODA,” has been making moves (and dropping serious amounts of cash) to ramp up its movie library. There are two high-profile projects from Martin Scorsese on the company’s slate, including his upcoming Western crime drama “Killers of the Flower Moon,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Jesse Plemons, as well as his musical biopic about the Grateful Dead, with Jonah Hill set to star as the iconic rock band’s frontman Jerry Garcia.
Apple recently acquired “12 Years a Slave” filmmaker Steve McQueen’s World War II film “Blitz.” Up next, the streamer is debuting “Cha Cha Real Smooth,” a feel-good comedic drama about a bar mitzvah DJ who strikes up a friendship with an older woman, on June 17. Source: VARIETY