'F1' Box Office Is the Pregame for 2025's Biggest Movie Brawl
The new film from Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski, F1: The Movie, scored a big box office hit on its opening weekend. Starring Brad Pitt, Kerry Condon, Damson Idris, and Javier Bardem, F1: The Movie made $55.6 million in its opening weekend, according to Rotten Tomatoes. Produced by Apple, this is a massive improvement over 2024's spy flick Argylle, which opened with a dismal $17.4 million last February and a Rotten Tomatoes score of 33 percent from movie critics.
F1 has a much healthier Rotten Tomatoes number than Argylle, with a score of 83 percent from movie critics. This is an increase from F1's initial debut score of 78 percent on June 17.
But the positive box office numbers, combined with the good reviews, are doubly interesting when you consider that F1's other Rotten Tomatoes score, the audience score, is, as of this writing, an impressive 97 percent. So, F1 is a hit, right?
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Well, kind of. Historically, for Apple, this is certainly a success. And, relative to the dismal performance of Pixar's Elio, F1 is certainly kicking some ass.
In terms of worldwide box office, F1 is, for now, the 12th most successful film of the year, with $144 million overall. This, however, still puts it behind Snow White ($205 million) and well behind Sinners ($364 million). So far, the number one movie of the year is the Chinese film Ne Zha 2 with nearly $2 billion overall. If we look at domestic numbers, A Minecraft Movie is the top dog with $423 million. To put this in perspective, the relative box office "failure" of Thunderbolts* has pulled in $381 million globally and $189 million domestically. In fact, domestically speaking, Thunderbolts* is still ahead of Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, which has earned $185 million in the states, though $561 million when you account for the worldwide take.
So, there are a lot of ways to define a hit, and compared to the underperformance of Thunderbolts*, F1 is only a hit relative to expectations and historical performance from other Apple movies. Or to put a very fine point on it, had F1 been released by Marvel Studios, it might be considered a "flop" right now.
All of this is made even stranger by the fact that any thoughts of F1's box office and audience perception are very likely to be quickly erased by the upcoming box office brawl between three heavyweight summer movies: Jurassic World Rebirth, Superman, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
Jurassic World Rebirth hits theaters this Wednesday (July 2) and is projected for an opening take of $67 million. Some forecasts (like Box Office Theory) put Superman at $135 million on the low end for its opening weekend (July 11), and Fantastic Four (July 25) at $125 million.
Related: Noteworthy Early ‘Superman’ Ticket Sales Hint at Movie's Box Office Potential
The bottom line here is that all three of these tentpoles will likely make much more in their respective opening weekends than F1 has. This also suggests that a clear winner of the summer 2025 blockbusters is hard to predict right now.
Conventional wisdom suggests that Jurassic World Rebirth will come in third in any version of this battle, but that movie also has the advantage of a very long Fourth of July opening weekend. (Jurassic movies also tend to do well at the box office, regardless of buzz.) Superman, meanwhile, has advanced screenings via Amazon that begin on July 8, three full days before its official release date. Finally, Fantastic Four is closing out the month with relatively no competition.
F1 may have added new fire to the summer box office season. But the truth is, the race is just getting started.
F1 is in theaters now.
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