Development On December 3, 2021, a bidding war commenced for an untitled film starring
Brad Pitt, with producer
Jerry Bruckheimer, director
Joseph Kosinski, and screenwriter
Ehren Kruger, who previously worked on
Top Gun: Maverick (2022), on board in their respective roles. F1 driver
Lewis Hamilton was also involved in the film as both a producer and actor. Studios involved in the bidding were
Paramount Pictures,
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
Sony Pictures,
Universal Pictures, and
Walt Disney Pictures, and streaming platforms
Netflix,
Apple, and
Amazon. Pitt was paid $30 million for his involvement. In November 2022,
Claudio Miranda announced he would be the film's cinematographer. In April 2023,
Damson Idris was hired after a lengthy casting process, which included a shortlist of actors driving the car in January 2023.
Kerry Condon and
Tobias Menzies would join the cast in the following months.
Sarah Niles and
Simone Ashley also joined the cast. Kruger received sole credit for the film's screenplay, along with story credit with Kosinski.
Jez Butterworth, Kara Smith,
Aaron Sorkin, and
Christopher Storer earned off-screen "Additional Literary Material" credit. In May 2024,
Pucks
Matthew Belloni reported the film's budget to be $300 million. Bruckheimer and Kosinski disputed the claim; the former cited rebates and sponsorships as lowering the budget, and the latter said: "I've never had an experience where they were off by this much on a film. I'm not sure where that number came from."
Filming in July 2023.|alt=Satellite photograph of Silverstone Circuit Prior to filming, Pitt and Idris tested
Formula Three and
Formula Two cars at
Paul Ricard in France. The
Dallara F2 2018 was stretched, widened and modified with a Formula One aerodynamic package created by
Mercedes Applied Science and run by
Carlin Motorsport. Another six remote-controlled chassis were used to film crashes. In July 2023, principal photography began at the
Silverstone Circuit in the United Kingdom, including filming during the
British Grand Prix weekend between July 7–9, outside of the official F1 sessions. The APXGP team had its own garage and motorhome during the weekend and their car was kept on display alongside other F1 cars during the mandatory "show and tell" session before the track action. Pitt was present with the actual drivers at the drivers' briefing and he and Idris stood alongside the drivers during the national anthem before the race. Their two cars were placed at the back of the grid with stunt drivers driving a part of the formation lap. The camera technology used for the fast-paced shots had evolved since
Top Gun: Maverick. With help from
Sony, At the
2024 24 Hours of Daytona, the #120
Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R competed with a
livery of the fictional "Chip Hart Racing" team from the film, with multiple replicas of it and the #96
Turner Motorsport BMW M4 GT3 used for filming. A camera-mounted
Lola B2K/10 was used as a filming car for high-speed shots. The filming car struggled to keep up with the modified F2 cars and by the time filming had shifted to Hungary, the car lost oil pressure and had a pump failure, which led to it being scrapped and replaced by one of the GP3-engined APXGP cars. Speaking with former F1 driver and
Sky Sports F1 pundit
Martin Brundle at the 2023 British Grand Prix, Pitt confirmed
Javier Bardem would star. Later that month,
ESPN reported that the film was titled
Apex, but later retracted this claim. The week after filming had started at the British Grand Prix, the
SAG-AFTRA strike began, resulting in the lead actors not being available and a reduced crew consisting of only
Equity actors sent to races from the onwards. Filming was then forced to continue through the season to make up for the lost races.
Music During the
2024 Austrian Grand Prix,
Hans Zimmer announced he would be composing the score for the film, marking his second collaboration with Kosinski after
Top Gun: Maverick. It is also Zimmer's second Formula One-related score, following the
Ron Howard-directed film
Rush (2013). Zimmer co-composed the score with Steve Mazzaro, creating what Kosinski described as a musical identity that reflects Formula One's dual nature, "a sport that straddles both the past and the present, with its rich history and cutting-edge technology." Zimmer crafted a "hybrid" score combining orchestra and electronic music. He envisioned the orchestra as "the human that sits inside the machine," while the electronics represented the machine itself. Discussions with producer and F1 champion
Lewis Hamilton helped shape Zimmer's understanding of that relationship, influencing how the music was written. and
Framestore provided
post-production services on the film, citing involvement from their studios in Montreal, London and Mumbai. Tudhope returned to collaborate with director Joseph Kosinski, leveraging techniques they used on
Top Gun: Maverick to re-skin jets to replace F1 cars captured during real Grands Prix with the fictional black-and-gold APXGP cars. The SAG-AFTRA strike was underway when production first began shooting for the Monza scenes in Italy, which meant the cast could not film. Stunt scenes were undertaken, with the plan to return to Monza the following year. However, scheduling of the Monza race and a re-paving of the entire track meant that a second round of filming there could not take place. “So,” says
F1 visual effects supervisor Ryan Tudhope, “we shot all of the cast stuff that we needed at Silverstone instead. We shot Silverstone for Monza and then relied on the array vehicle and scanning done in Italy to create a digital version of the Monza backgrounds. We’d use these to replace what we shot at Silverstone with Monza environments.” The film features 2,500 visual effects shots == Marketing ==