‘F1’ $10 Million Previews, Apple Original Films Record

Apple Original Films F1 via Warner Bros. sped to $10M in total previews from this week while Universal/Blumhouse/Atomic Monster’s M3GAN 2.0 drew $1.5M.

The Joseph Kosinski directed, Jerry Bruckheimer produced Formula One movie starring Brad Pitt, arguably the first of its kind tentpole for Apple Original Films on the big screen, bested the preview grosses of such Apple expensive movies as Ridley Scott’s Napoleon ($3M), Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon ($2.6M), Matthew Vaughn’s Argylle ($1.7M) and Greg Berlanti’s Fly Me to the Moon ($875K). F1 also smokes the previews of another racing car movie, the multi Oscar winning, solid grossing Ford v. Ferrari which is actually a high point for the struggling car sports genre at the box office; the best that there has been in recent times ($2.1M previews, $31.4M opening).

Broken out, F1 did $7M last night from showtimes that began at 3PM and another $3M from earlier week Imax and PLF previews. The outlook heading into the weekend is $40M-$50M+. Warner Bros. chipped in 50% of the global P&A. Both Apple and Warners recoup the P&A together before the Burbank, CA lot gets a distribution fee around 8%. Production costs per the filmmaker in interviews is $200M (though I constantly get phonecalls with the line “But, ya know, it cost $300M…). At the end of the day, get a grip people, F1 stands to open globally to $115M+.

M3GAN 2.0‘s previews are less than the original movie which did $2.75M and went on to a surprise $11.7M and $30.4M. M3GAN 2.0 will be lucky to clear $20M, last night’s previews from 2PM showtimes at 2,700 theaters around the level of Blumhouse’s Night Swim which did $1.45M and went on to post a $11.7M opening.

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