Jerry Bruckheimer and Joseph Kosinski worked together on “Top Gun: Maverick” and are re-teaming for “F1,” helmed by Apple and set to be released next summer.
Earlier in the year, a Puck report from Scott Mendelson hinted that, most likely due to delays and reshoots, Kosinski’s “F1” had a budget of well over $300 million. That’s a drastically high figure for a film that isn’t being seen as a guaranteed hit.
In a new interview with Deadline, Bruckheimer isn’t necessarily disputing the $300M figure as much as saying that it will end up costing drastically less than that because of “sponsorships” and “rebates”:
It’s completely, unfortunately, tens of millions of dollars out of whack in the wrong direction, and in the right direction for us. What people don’t realize is, first of all, we’re shooting in rebate [locations], England has a big rebate, lots of Europe has rebates and so does Abu Dhabi. It all lowers the budget. Plus, we’ve raised more money for our car [through sponsorship] than some Formula 1 teams. You take that all into consideration and it really drops that number quite a bit lower than what people would think.
This isn’t anything new. For example, more recently, Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II” received one of the biggest rebates from the EU, a whopping €46M, according to this article.
The sponsorships are another big factor as the racecars being used in the film, and in actual F1 events, are stamped with advertisement. You can probably shed off many millions from the budget just on that alone.
When all is said and done, I gather we’re still looking at a $200M movie. However, the trailer, released earlier today, was not that well-received online. Apple will have to do better than that to lure people to pay to watch this movie come next summer.