Apple’s Film Division Finally Finishes First at Box Office

Like the woebegotten racing crew in its new blockbuster F1, the Apple TV+ film division has long been scrambling for an elusive first-place finish. And like those same scrappy underdogs (mild if not entirely predictable spoiler warning for the movie), Apple has now finally scored a spot on the box office podium. 

This weekend, F1 roared to a $144 million global box office finish, securing the top spot on the US charts. The win could mark a turning point for the Big Tech player’s studio — though, fitting for a movie about one of the most logo-spackled sports in the world, a couple of key corporate partnerships can’t be overlooked.

F1 is a Team Sport

While Apple has been able to produce a string of TV hits — think Ted Lasso, Severance, and The Studio — making commercially successful movies has proven a little more difficult. High-profile releases such as Killers of the Flower Moon, Argyle and Fly Me to the Moon mostly proved to be high-profile bombs. Last year, the studio even shifted the release of Brad Pitt-George Clooney buddy caper film Wolfs from theaters to streaming-only to avoid a similar fate.

But F1 was too big to fail. The film — which came from the writer/director/producer trio behind smash-hit Top Gun: Maverick and pre-packaged with Pitt’s star appeal — triggered a bidding war across the industry, with Apple ending up the victor. The studio then sank as much as $300 million into the film, according to reporting from Puck. To recoup its investment, Apple turned to one of its bidding rivals, WarnerBros. Discovery, to handle its distribution and marketing, with WBD entitled to a share of the box office that scales with the number of tickets sold, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal.

In its first weekend, the partnership has proven successful (though the film, which was also made in collaboration with the eponymous racing group, will need to sustain its top speed for a couple more weeks to prove an actual hit). Still, it’s an encouraging win for Apple:

• With just around 45 million subscribers, Apple TV+ remains a small player in the streaming wars, though Apple is still spending around $4.5 billion a year making TV and movies — and losing about $1 billion per year in the process, according to a report from The Information in March.
• While that amounts to relatively small potatoes for a company that generated around $180 billion in gross profit in 2024, the company has started eyeing the division’s bloated budgets and pushing for more cost control, according to a Bloomberg report from last year.

A New Winning Formula? The company may be learning some broader lessons from partnering with WBD, and not just in its content business. On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Apple is considering using technology from Anthropic or OpenAI to power a new version of Siri after struggling for a long time to make significant strides in AI on its own. Translation: Hey, we’re really good at making race cars; now can someone else come grab the keys and get behind the wheel?