F1 Tops Apple TV+ for 300 Days as Pitt's Winning Streak Holds

Few actors working today have managed to straddle the theatrical and streaming landscapes with quite the consistency Brad Pitt has demonstrated across the first half of this decade. His record as both a box-office draw and a streaming phenomenon is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss as coincidence.

F1 Rewrites Apple's Record Books

Director Joseph Kosinski's F1, released in the summer of 2024, has proven to be a watershed moment for Apple Original Films. The racing drama pulled in $633 million at the worldwide box office against a reported production budget of somewhere between $200 million and $300 million — a haul significant enough to make it the highest-grossing theatrical release in Apple Original Films history, according to Collider. That achievement alone would mark a strong chapter in any actor's career, but the film's cultural staying power has been equally striking. At the time of writing, F1 has maintained a presence in Apple TV+'s U.S. top ten for more than 300 consecutive days — a longevity that speaks to the kind of word-of-mouth legs that studios rarely manufacture on purpose.

The film also made a quiet but meaningful mark on awards season. At the 98th Academy Awards, F1 earned four nominations, including a Best Picture nod that surprised some observers who had viewed the film primarily as crowd-pleasing spectacle. It ultimately took home the Best Sound award, a prize that felt fitting given Kosinski's meticulous construction of the racing sequences — sound design being the sinew that held the film's visceral energy together.

A Busy Actor in a Productive Season

With F1 still performing on streaming, Pitt has kept his theatrical momentum alive. His latest release, Heart of the Beast, directed by David Ayer, has generated $131 million globally against an $82 million budget across its first three weekends. The survival thriller — which also stars Anna Lambe and Oscar-winner J.K. Simmons — features a six-year-old German Shepherd named Uber in what is being described as one of the more memorable canine performances in recent memory. Pitt's promotional work for the film has been characteristically engaged, and the production itself navigated its share of behind-the-scenes complexities before reaching screens.

The Road to Cliff Booth

Looking further down the calendar, the most anticipated project on Pitt's slate is The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, a standalone sequel to Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood — the 2019 film that earned Pitt the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Tarantino has written the script but will not direct; that chair will be occupied by David Fincher, whose creative history with Pitt stretches back through two defining films of the 1990s. That Fincher-Pitt relationship has resurfaced in the cultural conversation recently, a reminder of how durable some of cinema's great director-actor partnerships can be. Cliff Booth is scheduled to open exclusively in IMAX on November 25 before transitioning to Netflix on December 23.

A Career Arc Worth Watching

What makes Pitt's current run particularly interesting from a craft perspective is the range it encompasses — from the sun-drenched kinetics of F1 to the stripped-back tension of Heart of the Beast to the character-driven nostalgia of the Tarantino universe. Each project represents a distinct filmmaking sensibility, and Pitt has consistently found ways to serve each one rather than coast on his own considerable star power. For an actor who has been a fixture of serious cinema for more than three decades, that adaptability remains one of his most underappreciated qualities.

F1 is streaming now on Apple TV+.