Apple’s Blockbuster Brad Pitt Movie Now Has Investors Asking a Wild New Question

For the past few years, Apple TV+ has mostly existed in the streaming world as that one friend who shows up to every group trip, contributes nothing to the Airbnb, but insists on splitting the Chick-Fil-A bill evenly (we all had a friend’s name come into mind just now). Sure, they had CODA (an Oscar win that briefly gave them a reason to sit at the grown-up table) but ever since then, the vibe’s been more art school intern with unlimited budget than actual blockbuster factory.

I mean, $20 billion spent since 2019 and your biggest cultural impact was Napoleon and Argylle? The former made us wonder if Ridley Scott (the director of Napoleon) had access to Google, and the latter made even Dua Lipa fans tap out… which is pretty hard to do.

So when Apple announced they were dropping F1, a $200M Formula 1 racing film starring Brad Pitt, the collective moaning from investors could’ve powered the city of Baltimore. It sounded like another expensive “everyone else is doing it” flex… the billionaire equivalent of building a space rocket just because Bezos and Musk did. But what do you know? F1 is actually… winning?

So far, F1 has pulled in $237 million globally in just 10 days after its June 27 release… and it’s on track to pass $300 million by the end of the day. Even crazier? It gave Brad Pitt the biggest opening weekend of his 37-year career. This man was in Fight Club, Troy, and Ocean’s Eleven, but somehow F1 is what finally put him on the top step of the podium. (Miracles, folks. They still happen.)

It’s easily Apple’s biggest theatrical win to date. And for once, they actually played the Hollywood game… like they wanted people to show up. They rolled out Apple Pay ticket discounts, had Tim Cook and Brad Pitt pop up at a New York Apple Store like it was a Hunger Games premiere, and finally leaned all the way in.

They even used actual iPhones mounted inside real race cars to film parts of the movie… which is either a genius integration or the world’s most expensive product placement. Either way, who cares… because it worked. Now analysts around the globe are floating the question: is this the start of Apple’s movie empire?

It just might be. After striking out with Killers of the Flower Moon, Napoleon, and Argylle (a trio that cost nearly $500 million and didn’t get close to breaking even) F1 is Apple’s first commercial W. There’s talk of sequels. Potential franchises. And thanks to Apple’s “premium on-demand” release plan, they’re actually positioned to make money this time… a shocking concept in the streaming world.

And while Wall Street’s still depressed about Apple’s AI announcements, the F1 win gave the stock a 6% bump over five trading days. That’s right… streaming Pitt did more for AAPL shares than AI Siri whispering “I’m working on it.”

To be clear, Apple’s not about to throw away the iPhone and become a movie studio (you already knew that). Their services division hauls in over a billion a day, and movies will always be the splashy, loss-leading cousin at next year’s July 4th party at Tim Cook’s house. But F1 showed that Apple, when it actually plays the Hollywood game instead of just hovering over it with a $1 billion drone, can win it. As one studio exec put it: “There’s a lot of gas left in the tank.” Let’s just hope they don’t swerve back into “we make cinema for the soul” mode and drop a $150M black and white film about a jazz-playing jellyfish next.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Apple and Google as mentioned in the article.