'F1' races to $140M global debut, sets box office record for Brad Pitt and Apple Original Films
Apple Original Films' F1, distributed by Warner Bros, debuted to a global opening of $140 million—$85 million from international markets and $55 million from a three-day domestic weekend.
This marks a new career best for Brad Pitt, surpassing the $112 million launch of World War Z. Strong audience response with an A CinemaScore and 92 per cent PostTrak rating supports continued momentum.
The film opened to $25 million on Friday alone, just shy of Pitt's top opening. Premium formats, including IMAX, accounted for 58 per cent of domestic earnings.
Notably, F1 outperformed previous racing-themed films, such as Ford v. Ferrari and Days of Thunder, at their openings.
In contrast, M3GAN 2.0 opened to $10.4 million across 3,112 theatres, a lower result than projected. The Friday debut stood at $4.5 million.
The sequel earned a B+ CinemaScore and 84 per cent PostTrak exit score, though early social media and critic reactions suggested weaker enthusiasm compared to the 2023 original.
Current weekend rankings place F1 at number one, followed by How to Train Your Dragon at number two with $19 million, Elio at $10.8 million, and M3GAN 2.0 at number four.
Other notable titles include 28 Years Later and Lilo & Stitch, with both continuing strong performance.
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5 days ago
- Express Tribune
Superman and F1 cross $500 million at global box office
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Express Tribune
26-07-2025
- Express Tribune
Hollywood vs censorville
A rude emoji was replaced with a politer one in F1: The Movie. Photo: File Film fans in India were outraged to learn that a 33-second kiss scene in Superman was shortened to just a few seconds by their country's censors. Despite the film's 13+ rating, India's Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) felt compelled to sanitise the embrace they described as "overly sensual." When it was created through the Cinematograph Act of 1952, the CBFC's official mandate was to certify films according to age categories, but it has since become notorious for its role as a censor. Recent examples of alterations in major Hollywood productions include replacing a middle-finger emoji appearing in F1: The Movie with a fist emoji. Swear words were muted in Marvel's Thunderbolts and Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. In Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (2023), the Indian board had Florence Pugh's nudity covered up with a digitally inserted CGI dress. "If a scene is meant for mature audiences, it should simply be placed in the appropriate category," argued writer Disha Bijolia in Indian online magazine Homegrown. "Instead, the CBFC repeatedly interferes with a filmmaker's vision — cutting into plots, disrupting emotional arcs, and flattening the intent behind entire narratives." Satisfying demand Along with the widespread censorship method of simply banning films, releasing alternate versions of movies is also well established in many countries beyond India. Authoritarian states know that even if a film is banned, it can still circulate illegally, which motivates them to distribute their own "more appropriate" versions of the works. Way before AI-created imagery became widely available, Iran had already equipped the country's censors with new digital technology by 2010, allowing them to tweak dialogues and images that didn't conform to Islamic modesty. The approach is detailed in an 2012 article in The Atlantic, which also shows stills comparing how the original scenes were retouched in the Iranian versions: Women simply disappear from the frame, or their neckline is covered up with a clunky vase. Even Will Ferrell's crotch is hidden behind a wall in the motorsports comedy Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006). Drugs not okay Even though many major Hollywood studios no longer distribute their films in Russia since it launched its full-scale war on Ukraine in 2022, there are still some Western films appearing in the country's cinemas or on streaming platforms. One recent example of a film that circulated in an altered version was the award-winning US film Anora (2024). Censors simply zoomed into various scenes to crop out the depictions of characters using drugs, as shown by independent Russian-language news site Meduza. Meanwhile, the film's nude scenes featuring the stripper played by Mikey Madison were left untouched. A film like Anora would never air on Turkish television. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's conservative AKP government, around 95 per cent of the media landscape has been brought into line with their conservative guidelines. Broadcasters mainly avoid sex scenes and portrayals of LGBTQ+ characters. Historical topics seen as promoting "anti-Turkish rhetoric" can be particularly contentious. Cigarettes and alcohol are also blurred on TV, with some stations coming up with creative solutions to cover up the items. Meanwhile, some Hollywood studios have released their own self-censored versions to circumvent bans and blurs. Sony Pictures supplied an alternate version of Blade Runner 2049 to Turkey and other non-Western markets, removing or cropping scenes showing nudity, as film critic Burak Göral first noted. Turkey's Film Critics Association (S?YAD) issued an open letter condemning the censorship, noting that the cuts were "an insult to moviegoers in Turkey." Accessing China China is renowned for banning and shortening films, too. Official censorship guidelines prohibit, among other things, the "promotion of cults or superstition." The 2016 Ghostbusters reboot thus failed to be released in the country despite being retitled Super Power Dare Die Team. Surprisingly, Disney's Coco, which centers on the Mexican Day of the Dead, was authorised a year later. Major productions that have been altered by China's censors include the 2012 James Bond film, Skyfall. A scene in which a Chinese security guard is killed was completely cut out because it suggested that China is unable to protect its own territory from foreign agents. In other "controversial" scenes, the subtitles differed from what was actually been said on screen. In the famous portrait scene in James Cameron's Titanic 3D (2012), Kate Winslet was cropped up to her chin to hide her nudity. "Considering the vivid 3D effects, we fear that viewers may reach out their hands for a touch and thus interrupt other people's viewing," a Chinese official explained. In 2022, social media users widely mocked the censors' alternate ending for Minions: The Rise of Gru. In the original version, villains Gru and Wild Knuckles evade capture by authorities after the latter fakes his own death. But through a series of subtitled stills that were widely compared to a PowerPoint presentation for their poor quality, the Chinese version had Wild Knuckles arrested and imprisoned for 20 years; he starts a theater troupe in jail. Gru is portrayed as simply "returning to his family," with being a father becoming his "biggest accomplishment." Hollywood studios have also been releasing their own alternate versions of movies in China to avoid state censorship — and the PowerPoint slides. The country began allowing a limited number of Hollywood films per year into the country in 1994, and as major studios increasingly competed to gain access to the restricted and lucrative slots, they also started tailoring their stories to please a Chinese market of some 1.4 billion people. A 2020 report by nonprofit organisation PEN denounces the growing trend of producers willingly altering their films for Beijing's censors: Hollywood filmmakers "are making difficult and troubling compromises on free expression," it stated. Iron Man 3 (2013) is a prominent case highlighting this approach. While altered films typically lose runtime, four minutes of extra content were added to the Marvel blockbuster, with exclusive scenes featuring Chinese star Fan Bingbing and actor Wang Xueqi, as well as scenes promoting a local milk brand. In the Chinese version, the beverage helps Iron Man/Tony Stark recover from an injury.
Express Tribune
21-07-2025
- Express Tribune
How to shoot your reboot
As most parents of small children can attest, one of the world's greatest places to take a nap is a cinema. This holds particularly true if that cinema's head honchoes have had the foresight to install reclining leather seats and an industrial-strength air conditioning unit blasting out shades of the Arctic. It is why so many brave souls will fork over hard-earned money to sit through the Smurfs film this summer, probably the reason Inside Out 2 was able to rake in over a billion dollars last year, and must be why filmmakers deem it perfectly acceptable to toss out a sequel to Bad Guys next month. There is nothing that primary caregivers of young children love more than a good nap, and they are willing to pay to get it. However, if scheduling a decent daytime nap is your primary goal when you cave to child-originated requests to watch the live action remake of Dreamworks' How To Train Your Dragon at the cinema (which has already been out for about five weeks, so it is time you stopped dragging your feet), then you are urged to reconsider. No naps will be had here today. For a solid two hours, writer and director Dean DeBlois and his How To Train Your Dragon team have just one goal: to blow your mind, completely and utterly. How to make a remake You are defenceless against this incoming mind-blowiing no matter which side you are approaching this remake from. It doesn't matter if you are a taking your first baby steps into this franchise, or are a devoted fan of the animated original, or if have only the wispiest of memories of when you watched it twice 15 years ago. Whatever your current state of mind is, Gerard Butler's blue eyes - lifted straight from the animation (as is Butler himself) - will give you an electric shock. As Stoic the Vast, Butler's beautiful Scottish lilt and the soliloquies of seething frustration he spits out at his son (and our hero) Hiccup are lifted straight from the original. You will either swim in an ocean of nostalgia as memories of the original ticker-tape before you, or squirm as the tiniest hidden part of you begins to relate - for the first time - to this unreasonable mountain of a man. Stoic desperately wants his son to live up to his dragon-slaying Viking heritage, and is genuinely flabbergasted at how he can produce a boy so unlike him in every way. Fifteen years later, we may still swear our allegiance to Hiccup, but now, with Butler there in the flesh to make us understand Stoic better than ever, is it possible that we understand his growing desperation over the generation gap? You will see Vikings of unorthodox ethnicity as the cast expands to include diversity, but Stoic offers the simplest of explanations to explain as to how they came to be here in the cold and dragon-infested Isle of Berk. However, it is our most important Viking, the almost twig-like Hiccup, who will abscond with your heart. A hero in the purest form, Hiccup's struggles for acceptance will twang a chord in anyone who has ever struggled to gain acceptance, be it at school or at home or anywhere else. His story speaks to everyone in that movie theatre, whether you are the child who dragged your parents, or the parents who gave in to the child. You cannot help but adore this boy with a beautiful soul, who does everything he can to protect the dragon he once vowed to kill. If you somehow remain unmoved by the boy, the first time you see Toothless the dragon slide open one giant cat-like emerald eye, you may understand that love at first sight does, in fact, exist. It is a love that will blossom with every tentative step both boy and dragon take towards one another, and burgeon to bursting point when you take to the skies with Toothless and Hiccup for the very first time. As you soar above mountains, dive through valleys and glide over seas, you will realise only now that you are doing what neither Peter Pan nor Aladdin's magic carpet could pull off. You are flying without wings, transported far beyond the confines of your cinema leather chair. However, all of this is a moot point, regardless of whether or not you cherished that longstanding childhood ambition of flying; from the moment those opening credits roll across the screen, the music will swallow you whole with no intention of letting you go. It really doesn't matter what Stoic, Hiccup or Toothless get up to. At the end of the day, you get a gift of plaintive orchestra that conveys Vikings' struggle with dragons, a boy's bottomless love for the pet who gave him a purpose, and a dragon's undying devotion for the one person who ever understood him. Close your eyes, and you will picture it all playing out in the screen of your mind. If music could speak words, John Powell's score says as much as every word spoken by the cast - and beyond. And now, because we are also happy to include even the most reluctant filmgoer, if you still find yourself checking your Instagram notifications during this mesmerising two hours, then it is possible you are cyrogenically frozen and you are watching this as you time-travelled from a dystopian future. In which case you probably have bigger problems than one live-action remake. A final lesson If Disney could somehow learn how Dreamworks and DeBlois harness all the devotion and attention to detail that goes into creating a true faithful remake, nitpickity fans could perhaps stop complaining about the off-centre sunrise in the 2019 Lion King or the muted lifeless colours of the 2019 Aladdin. (For one thing, they wouldn't have to complain because no one filmmaker would have been idiotic enough to allow it to happen.) Because this is 2025, and we have thus already suffered through numerous Disney reboots, by now we already know that when we hear the phrase 'live-action remake', it is really code for 'soulless cash grab'. We have no one but ourselves to blame for production houses' predeliction for soulless cash grabs when it comes to children's films, because, if you recall, parents are by no means averse to very expensive naps in a dark room. DeBlois, however, is the man responsible for the first animated How To Train Your Dragon in 2010, and has thus sidestepped all these Disney-esque pitfalls to give us the direct opposite of a soulless cash grab. Instead, with consummate surgeon-like precision as he reconstructs the film shot-by-shot, he has given us, a soulful tribute - one that is emboldened with a rich orchestra and a cast and crew who treat the original with reverence it deserves. In conclusion, your dreams of that nap will, regrettably - albeit fittingly in a film featuring fire-breathing dragons - go up in smoke. Save the nap for when you are forced to go and endure Smurfs.
