The 'F1' Movie Might Be a Hit, But Apple’s Movie Strategy Is Still a Miss
Brad Pitt’s racing spectacle 'F1' draws crowds, but Apple’s broader film slate continues to stall with weak streaming viewership and limited audiences.
Today I want to analyze the “success” of the new F1 movie featuring Brad Pitt, Damson Idris and Javier Bardem, but also discuss why this box office success shouldn’t encourage Apple to continue with their current theatrical-to-streaming strategy.
F1’s $144M Opening Marred by a $300M+ Budget
Apple Studios’ newest project topped last weekend’s box office, earning $144M+ globally. Objectively, that’s a pretty great opening- a quick search will show that the film will likely rank within the Top 40 opening weekends of all-time using this Box Office Mojo data. Alongside an incredible 97% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes and a flurry of positive social media fodder, the movie’s on track to be a major success, right? Maybe.
While F1 has had a very promising movie debut, the film reportedly was extremely expensive. While most reports have the film sitting between $250M and $300M, according to respected media analyst Matthew Belloni of Puck (also host of an incredible podcast) the movie may be one of the most expensive movies ever made, reportedly costing more than the $300M.
There’s a few reasons the film’s cost was so high:
Production began but almost immediately halted due to the 2023’s SAG-AFTRA strikes.
Using the lead actors in a real Formula 1 vehicle required increased training and safety protocols, further increasing costs.
Intensive marketing campaign.
So does F1 have a chance at becoming profitable? Yes, but it’ll be very challenging. A “success” is normally earning two to three times its production budget, meaning it’ll have a lot of heavy lifting to do over the next few weeks.
Awards Can’t Save a Failing Movie Strategy
I’ll say what few are willing to admit: Apple TV+’s theater-to-SVOD strategy has not been effective. Maybe I’m a little cynical, but after five years of releases and only a few minor wins, it may be time for Apple to pull the plug on their movie strategy — or at least rethink it.
The studio has had some critical success, with several projects having earned or been nominated for prestigious entertainment awards. Marketing a project as an award contender is expensive and, in theory, boosts audience interest.
CODA won best picture at the 94th Academy Awards and was nominated for several other categories. Almost two years later, Killers of the Flower Moon (KOTFM) earned many accolades. Aside from those, most other projects have failed to earn recognition from major Hollywood awards.
But do prestigious accolades really translate to viewership for Apple? Short answer - no.
Martin Scorsese’s project didn’t even break even in theaters. Killers of the Flower Moon reportedly cost a little over $200M and only grossed $158M. Okay, what about Best Picture winner CODA? Despite its modest $10M budget, it only earned $2.2M at the box office. The studio also produced Ridley Scott’s Napoleon movie, starring Joaquin Phoenix, a highly anticipated historical biopic. The Napoleon film grossed $240M on a $200M budget — technically breaking even, but likely a loss once marketing is factored in.
“Analysts have questioned why Apple spends billions annually on a business so far afield from its core consumer-electronics operation, even if it's barely a blip for a company worth some $3 trillion. "The strategic value it brings is sufficiently mysterious for people not to talk about it very much," said analyst Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson in an article by The Wall Street Journal.
I won’t dive into every individual movie, because most of them follow this same pattern of being a box office flop.
Minimal Viewership Impact Despite Robust Theatrical Strategy
When analyzing industry-leading research firm Nielsen we see that Apple TV+’s movies earned 3.085B minutes viewed. At first that may sound like a lot, but the movies category of Nielsen’s Rankings has earned 478.536B minutes viewed, meaning AppleTV+ made up a minute .644% of minutes viewed for movies on streaming.
Here’s a breakdown of viewership by title, based on Nielsen data:
Spirited - 444M during 2022 holidays, not directly following debut
Ghosted - 373M minutes viewed in the two weeks following its release
Killers of the Flower Moon - 1.126B viewed in the three weeks following its release (Nielsen missed first 2 days)
Wolfs - 302M minutes viewed in the week following its release
The Gorge - 935M minutes viewed in the three weeks following its release (Nielsen missed first 2 days)
Fountain of Youth - 349M minutes viewed in the week following its release
Overall, Apple’s lower-budget direct-to-streaming films attract initial attention, but viewership tends to drop off quickly, unlike Killers of the Flower Moon, which retained its audience longer.
This might suggest that theatrical releases perform better — yet some major-budget films like Argylle and Napoleon never even appeared in Nielsen’s rankings. It’s also worth noting that neither film was a box office success, despite Apple reportedly paying $200M for Argylle and $100M for Napoleon — before factoring in production and marketing expenses.
When analyzing Luminate Data, Apple TV+ seems to be doing a little better. In total the movies category has earned 112.913B minutes viewed, where Apple’s ranking projects make up a little over 3% of minutes viewed with 3.778B minutes viewed.
In these rankings we only see direct-to-streaming projects with Fountain of Youth, The Gorge, The Instigators, and Wolfs. Furthermore, we see these titles ranking within the firm’s measurements for a longer period (as the minimal minutes viewed threshold is considerably lower than Nielsen’s).
Luminate Data and Nielsen have different methodologies, panel sizes, measure dates, and more. With misaligned date ranges, it’s an apple-to-oranges comparison.
Projects with multiple ranked entries across different positions suggest sustained interest:
The Gorge (Luminate: 6 rankings, Nielsen: 3)
Wolfs (Luminate: 3, Nielsen: 1)
Fountain of Youth (Luminate: 2, Nielsen: 2)
The Instigators (Luminate: 4)
Killers of the Flower Moon (Nielsen: 3)
Ghosted (Nielsen: 2)
Spirited (Nielsen: 1)
Only The Gorge shows multi-week dominance across both research firms. It consistently appears in high-ranking positions, showing not just a spike but strong ongoing appeal.
F1 was a pretty good movie, 8.5/10.
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definitely need to rethink their strategy soon! i've not even heard of most of their most-streamed movies
Apple is currently working on an F1 sequel