Still from Apple’s “F1.”
Apple
Lights out and away we go.
“F1: The Movie” hasn’t even reached the checkered flag of its theatrical run, but it’s already Apple’s best film release ever.
The film, distributed by Warner Bros. Discovery, zoomed past $293 million at the global box office over the weekend. This outpaced Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon,” which generated $221 million during its run in 2023, to become Apple’s highest-grossing theatrical release.
The tech company has only sent a handful of films to cinemas with wide releases since delving into the media business in recent years. “Killers of the Flower Moon” tallied $158 million worldwide, “Fly Me to the Moon” took in just $42 million and “Argylle” generated $96 million in ticket sales globally.
“‘F1’ is an extremely important movie for Apple and for the industry at large,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “It’s a perfect test case for how a streaming service can develop a film that’s tailormade for the big screen while simultaneously promoting the film across the millions of small screens that their technological footprint puts directly in front of their subscribers.”
“F1” has benefited greatly from its partnership with IMAX. Before production, Apple and the film’s top creatives reached out to not only secure the use of IMAX’s camera technology, but also a three-week release in its theaters.
In fact, the “F1” deal meant that Universal’s “Jurassic World Rebirth” didn’t get a domestic IMAX release and was only featured on IMAX screens in China. That film will also appear in IMAX screens in Japan next month.
“F1” has generated $60 million of its total global haul from IMAX theaters, a little more than 20% of its total gross so far. Domestically, the film has generated $27.4 million in ticket sales through IMAX screenings, about 25% of the film’s ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada.
While the film is nearing $300 million in global ticket sales, it still has a few more laps to go in order to be profitable for Apple. The movie cost between $200 million and $300 million to make, according to reports, and an estimated $100 million to market. The studio is also splitting receipts with Warner Bros. and theaters.
“Naturally, a mega budget movie like ‘F1’ can have a rather long road to profitability given the various revenue splits with movie theaters and Warner Bros. as well, but Apple has the resources to and the cash reserves to take on that risk,” said Dergarabedian.
For Apple, success looks very different than for traditional studios. Entertainment isn’t the company’s main revenue driver — not even close. Apple has a $3 trillion market cap and generates most of its revenue from its suite of tech devices.
And Apple isn’t just spending money on movies and television products to try and fuel sales of its phones, TVs and computers.
“We got into this business because we thought it would be a good business,” Apple services chief Eddy Cue said in a recent Bloomberg interview. “And in order to continue to do great things, you need businesses to be profitable.”
Apple has gained momentum in the pop culture space with shows like “Ted Lasso,” “Severance” and “The Studio” and was the first streamer to win the best picture award at the Oscars for 2021’s “Coda.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.
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