Summary

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer chats with Perri Nemiroff about F1: The Movie.

Bruckheimer discusses collaborating with Apple and reuniting with filmmaker Joseph Kosinski for unparalleled racing visuals and an authentic Formula One experience.

Bruckheimer also praises the unsung heroes in the F1 production, emphasizing the importance of teamwork.

In the brilliant Top Gun: Maverick, director Joseph Kosinski carves a legacy sequel worthy of matching its beloved predecessor, with breathtaking action sequences matched by touching emotional beats. However, Kosinski didn’t do this alone, with his challenges halved and his talent doubled alongside producer Jerry Bruckheimer. With the likes of Flashdance, Armageddon, Pirates of the Caribbean, and National Treasure in his back catalog, Bruckheimer made for the perfect accompaniment to Kosinski’s vision. Three years on from the massive success of Top Gun: Maverick, Bruckheimer and Kosinski are back together for F1, the Apple-funded blockbuster that follows Brad Pitt’s once-iconic race car driver Sonny Hayes, who lost his confidence in a tragic accident on the track. Many years later, he is finally offered the chance at redemption. The film packs eye-popping visuals with an authentic racing-based viewing experience, with Bruckheimer even noting that audiences will feel “immersed during the races” and “emotionally immersed with these characters as they go through this journey.” In light of the movie’s impressive Rotten Tomatoes score and Collider’s Ross Bonaime calling it “one of the best racing movies ever,” Perri Nemiroff sat with Bruckheimer to discuss all things F1, including the process of making a “real movie,” working with Kosinski again, the unsung heroes of the production, and much more.
Jerry Bruckheimer Knew He Had to Work With Joseph Kosinski After ‘Tron: Legacy’

“This is a real filmmaker.”

Image via Warner Bros. Pictures / Apple Original Films

PERRI NEMIROFF: I really want to hear about your partnership with Joe [Kosinski]. You did Top Gun: Maverick together, now you have more success here, and I know you’ve got another project together on the horizon. Do you remember the very first thing you saw in him, or saw him do that made you say to yourself, “That right there is a long-term collaborator for me, someone who is going to continue to raise the bar like I like to do?” JERRY BRUCKHEIMER: Well, he’s an adult. He’s an engineer, trained as an engineer; he’s an architect, trained as an architect. He’s a phenomenal filmmaker. When I saw Tron [Legacy], which he did, I said, “Whoever made this, I need to know who Joe Kosinski is.” I said, “This is a real filmmaker.” So, I met him. I wanted to make movies with him. I brought him onto Top Gun: Maverick. I took him to Paris to pitch Tom [Cruise] on what he was going to do with Top Gun, and Tom loved his ideas, and we made a movie together. We had a great experience. We had a big success together. It’s nice to have a success and be friends with the people you work with. I had a great relationship with him, with Tom Cruise, with everybody. Chris McQuarrie works very closely with Tom. You have these parts of your life that you create friendships with the people you work with, which is unusual because usually you have your friends outside your business. But this relationship with Joe, nobody works harder than he does. He storyboards everything. He’s really precise on everything he wants. He’s a technical whiz. He created a camera, now, that can pan remotely, which we had to put antennas all around the track. Him and Claudio [Miranda], his cinematographer, created this camera that can pan from Brad [Pitt]’s face to the car passing them, which is all done remotely. What you see in this movie when you see Brad in the car and Dason [Idris] in the car driving, they’re really driving. This is not process. There’s no process in this movie with these guys driving. They’re driving at these speeds. The hardest part is you’re driving, you’re in front of sometimes 100 million people, and you’ve got to remember your lines. So, it’s all this pressure on these actors, plus the physical pressure it takes to be in these cars, taking the five G’s and these corners, going from 180 down to 50, braking — you have to have really strong legs to be able to do this — shifting the gears, understanding your tire pressures. It’s just unbelievable what they’re dealing with.
Apple and F1 Made It Possible to Totally Immerse Audiences in ‘F1: The Movie’

“Don’t do process. Make a real movie.”

I want to ask a somewhat similar question about Apple. After working with them as partners on this movie, what is something about that collaboration that suggests that you will be able to go even bigger with this UAP movie that you’re going to do? BRUCKHEIMER: It’s all about the people. It’s never about the company. It’s the people within the company, and they’ve been great. They allowed us to make this movie, and they encouraged us to do it the right way, to do it for real. Don’t do process. Make a real movie. Immerse yourself. They negotiated deals with F1, which was very difficult. And just to sit down and sit with these people and say, “How can we make our lives easier,” meaning our filmmakers, and that’s what they did. Besides the technology they gave us, they took their camera from the iPhone, enhanced it, and put it in two cars in every real race. So, sometimes when you see these points of view, they come out of an actual F1 race, and they’re going 220 miles an hour. So, it’s unbelievable. When you say you’re immersed during the races, you’re immersed, and then you’re emotionally immersed with these characters as they go through this journey. Now a personal question inspired by the film. In it, Sonny explains that he’s always chasing that feeling while driving when everything goes quiet. It was making me wonder, what is that for you as a film producer? What feeling on set are you always chasing? BRUCKHEIMER: It’s always in the back of the theater after we finish a movie, where we can take you on a ride, and we watch you laugh, we watch you applaud, we watch you cry. We watch you walk out, and you’re smiling. That’s my quiet moment.

Image via Apple

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You’ve accomplished so much over the course of your career. Is there any one specific thing you did in this movie that you’re most proud of, or felt like ticking off an item on a filmmaking bucket list? BRUCKHEIMER: It’s the amount of energy and know-how and expertise that went into the technology and making of this movie. That’s why you want to see this movie in IMAX. You want to see it on the biggest screen possible. The sound rumbles. You feel it. You feel like you’re in those cars. You feel the emotion of these characters. You’re swept up in this movie. You can’t think about anything else, and that’s what good moviemaking is. If we can take you on a journey, on a long ride, and this is an over two-hour movie, and make you be a part of our world for a couple of hours, we’ve won.
Jerry Bruckheimer Highlights the Unsung Heroes of ‘F1: The Movie’

“It just took a Herculean task to make this movie.”

I’ll end with one more question inspired by the film. It’s something that is flat out said in it that I really appreciated. It was the emphasis on racing being a team sport. To lean into that idea, can you name an unsung hero of F1: The Movie, someone we don’t get to talk to or see on screen enough, but was absolutely vital to making a movie of this quality? BRUCKHEIMER: There’s a number of them. There’s our line producer who did a phenomenal job, and his team, that was great. Our AD department was totally amazing. How we got all these cars and everything to nine different places around the world, and to remember all the things that we missed or we had to get, it just took a Herculean task to make this movie. They’re the unsung heroes. F1: The Movie races into theaters on June 27.

F1

Release Date

June 27, 2025

Director

Joseph Kosinski

Writers

Ehren Kruger

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