Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski turns the key on a trailer and Q&A for his F1 racing drama starring Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! Joseph Kosinski, the director of 2022’s box-office-saving champion, Top Gun: Maverick, is back with F1. This underdog racing drama puts audiences in the driver’s seat of vehicles and emotions traveling at 180 mph. After months of teasing his follow-up to the Tom Cruise-led blockbuster, Kosinski is ready to let the first trailer for F1 out of the gate!

Joseph Kosinski’s F1 trailer stars Brad Pitt (Bullet Train), Damon Idris (Snowpiercer), Javier Bardem (No Country for Old Men), Kerry Condon (The Banshees of Inisherin), Tobias Menzies (The Crown), Sarah Niles (Ted Lasso), Kim Bodnia (Killing Eve), and Samson Kayo (Truth Seekers).

Today’s F1 trailer highlights the drama on and off the track between Brad Pitt (Sonny Hayes) and Damon Idris (Joshua Pearce) and the adrenaline-pumping camerawork from Kosinski and his crew. F1 tells a compelling underdog story about racers looking to make their mark by working together to win a single race. Sparks and emotions fly as Hayes and Pearce butt heads while Ruben (Javier Bardem) tries to keep them from killing each other, and Kate (Carrie Condon) gets to the heart of the racing duo’s heated partnership.

In addition to today’s F1 trailer reveal, we recently attended a sneak peek of the footage with Joseph Kosinski and world-famous Formula 1 racer Lewis Hamilton making introductions to the anticipated preview. The panel, moderated by Scottish DJ and presenter Edith Bowman, began with Hamilton expressing his enthusiasm for the film, mentioning its authenticity, intense depiction of speed, and powerhouse performances.

“Joe, Jerry, Brad, the cast and the whole Filmmaking Team put an incredible amount of effort to deliver a genuine Formula 1 racing experience, unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before on screen,” said Hamilton. “As you may have heard, the film was shot during the F1 races over the course of a season, and with Joe at the helm, audiences around the globe are going to feel like they’re on the track and in the driver’s seat.”

Hamilton continued, “Watching Brad drive around speeds over 180 miles an hour was really impressive to see because it’s not something you can just learn overnight. And the dedication and the focus that Brad put into this process has been amazing to witness. This film has got it all. Brad Pitt, speed, thrills, an epic underdog story, drama, humor, and a little bit of romance.”

“You may even recognize some familiar faces from the world of Formula One racing. As someone who’s dedicated his whole life to this sport, I’m so, so honored to have worked alongside this team of actors and filmmakers. This has been such a thrill for me. And I genuinely promise this film delivers on every level.”

Next, Edith asked Joseph Kosinski what inspired him to tackle the exciting world of Formula 1 racing as his next feature-length project.

“Well, I think like a lot of people during Covid, I found myself starting to watch the races and found this great television show called Drive to Survive, and I found that it’s an incredibly unique sport in that your teammate is also your, in many ways, your greatest competition. And for me, that makes for a great drama. I also loved how the first season of the show focused on the last place teams, the underdogs rather than the Ferrari, the Mercedes, the Red Bull, the teams that you see at the front of the pack. And I thought that there was an interesting story to be told about an underdog team in trying to not win the championship, but just trying to win one race against these titans of the sport. So that’s where it started. And lucky for me, I had a contact who was in Formula One that I could reach out to, so I did.”

Edith then inquired about Kosinski’s approach to capturing the overwhelming speed of Formula 1 racing on camera.

“Well, the first thing I did was I reached out to Lewis Hamilton who gave that incredible intro, and obviously he lives that sport every day,” Kosinski said. “He’s one of the greatest of all time and asked him to be my partner on making this film. So having Lewis gave me this incredible in into this world, and one of the people he introduced me to was Toto Wolf, the team principal of Mercedes. And I started talking with them about wanting to capture the speed of this sport, and It was actually Toto who came up with the idea of rather than making a movie car fast enough to kind of achieve these speeds, he said, why don’t you start with a race car and take a real race car and then work the cameras that you need into that. So we did that. We actually bought six F2 cars, real F2 race cars and worked with Mercedes AMG, the Formula One team and their engineers to build real race cars that could carry our camera equipment recorders and transmitters for making this film. So every time you see Brad or Damson driving this movie, they’re driving on their own in one of these real race cars on a real F1 track. So that’s kind of how we approached the making of this film.”

Next, Kosinski commented on the importance of featuring compelling characters at the story’s center, saying, “It always starts with a great script and a great story. I knew that no matter how accurate or exciting the racing is, it doesn’t mean anything if you’re not telling a story supported with great characters. So it all starts with the script and worked with Aaron Krueger, who also worked on Top Gun Maverick. He wrote an incredible script for us to start with. And then the most important thing a director does beyond developing the script is casting.”

“Casting is everything. And the group of actors that we pulled together for this film is pretty incredible. Javier Bardem and Brad together, their friendship, which is an old one- three decades old, really is the core of this story and of this film and just seeing them together on screen is really special,” Joseph continued. “Carrie Condon- Yeah, she’s incredible. She plays the team technical director, so she’s the person in charge of designing the car and the engineers and the drivers. There’s some healthy tension there on every team, and it makes for a great relationship between the two of them. And then Damson Iris, who people might know from his television career, but maybe not from the movies. I’m really excited for people to see him here going toe to toe with Brad on a big screen and a big story. So yeah, we have an incredible cast of supporting actors as well. And yeah, it’s a great ensemble.”

Continuing to discuss the film, Joseph detailed the filming process, revealing how he and Sony worked side-by-side to ensure the cameras could capture all the action.

“I mean, the big challenge was just the camera system itself. I mean, we had to develop a brand new camera system taking everything we learned on Top Gun Maverick and pushing it much further. You can’t put 60 pounds of gear onto a race car and expect it’s going to perform the same way. So we took those top gun cameras and we worked closely with Sony, sizing them down to something about a quarter of the size. And then on top of that, something I really wanted to do on this film was actually be able to operate and move the cameras while we were shooting, which was something we weren’t able to do on Top Gun. So we have motorized mounts on the car as well. So you have transmitters that are transmitting the picture back. We’ve got transmitters controlling the movement of the camera. I’m sitting at the base station with Claudio, our cinematographer looking at 16 screens. I’ve got camera operators on the controls for the cameras and it’s calling out. Camera moves like a live television show while they’re shooting. So much research and technology and development went into just being able to roll a frame of footage in addition to the training for the actors and the logistics of shooting at a real race. So it was a lot of prep to be able to pull this off.”

What do you think about Joseph Kosinski’s F1 trailer? Let us know in the comments section below.

The post Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski turns the key on a trailer and Q&A for his F1 racing drama starring Brad Pitt and Javier Bardem appeared first on JoBlo.