After Top Gun: Maverick's Success, Why Did The Team Make F1 With Brad Pitt Instead Of Tom Cruise?

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2 days ago

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Tom Cruise and director Joseph Kosinski came together to make Top Gun: Maverick and in the process made one of the biggest movies in recent years. It wasn't the first film the pair had made together, and Cruise likes to work with certain directors again and again. But Kosinski's follow-up to Maverick, the racing drama F1, stars Brad Pitt instead of Cruise. But this is probably a good thing, according to the filmmakers.
The Mission: Impossible star is no stranger to racing movies, having made the hit Days of Thunder. One can imagine Cruise would have been right at home behind the wheel of a Formula One car, doing all the driving himself. However, Joseph Kosinski admits that, as capable as Tom is, he might have actually pushed things too far. The director recently told GQ…
Tom always pushes it to the limit, but at the same time is super capable and very skilled. They both have the natural talent for driving. But yeah, I could see Tom maybe scaring us a little bit more.
It's certainly true that Tom Cruise doesn't like to be told 'No.' The man has fired insurance companies who wouldn't let him perform certain stunts in movies, so it's difficult to imagine that he would be ok with drawing a line on his driving in a movie and letting somebody else do any of it.
Brad Pitt still does a great deal of the actual driving that we will see when F1 hits theaters later this summer. But it seems he doesn't do all of it, which is why the filmmakers seem to be glad they're not working with Cruise on this one. F1's action-vehicle supervisor, Graham Kelly, who has worked with Tom Cruise before, indicates that Pitt knows when to draw a line, while Cruise may not. He explained…
We'd have had a crash. Tom pushes it to the limit. I mean really to the limit. That terrifies me. I mean, I've done loads of Mission: Impossibles with Tom and it's the most stressful experience for someone like me building cars for him, doing stunts with him. Whereas Brad listens and he knows his abilities, and I think he'd be the first to say, 'Yeah, I'm not going to do that.'
This may be the first time I've seen filmmakers indicate that Cruise's desire to do 'everything' on screen might not always be for the best. Still, the A-lister has indicated there are plans to make a sequel to Days of Thunder down the road, so the actor who insists on doing it all will likely get his chance to do all the high-speed driving he wants. And he and Joseph Kosinski may still find themselves together again on the almost inevitable Top Gun 3.