Director Joseph Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer are finishing off F1 – and then moving onto a UFO movie.
If you can take a long-dormant action flick from almost four decades ago, remix some of the ingredients and produce a film that grosses nearly $1.5bn then you’re going to find yourself in demand. That’s precisely the spot that director Joseph Kosinski and Jerry Bruckheimer find themselves in right now.
Although Kosinski wasn’t quite able to fully reinvigorate the TRON franchise back in 2010 with TRON: Legacy (still an underrated film, I’d argue) the director teamed with Jerry Bruckheimer (who we spoke to last year) to put everything together in 2022 with Top Gun: Maverick. It involved reconfiguring the 1986 film’s best bits, adding in some incredible practical action sequences and getting the best out of Tom Cruise’s movie star persona. The result was the biggest hit of Tom Cruise’s career.
Next up, Kosinski and Bruckheimer are attempting to thread a similar needle, casting Brad Pitt in F1, another big-budget project that looks to use a similar formula. Big budget, eye-popping practical sequences and playing right into the advancing age of its A-list leading man. Arguably, F1 (pictured above) has even more going for it given the huge global brand power of Formula 1.
Will the film match the heights of Top Gun: Maverick? We’ll find out when it releases in June, but what seems to be a certainty is that Kosinski and Bruckheimer have the ability to get a film moving at the moment. Further proven by a report today emerging via The Hollywood Reporter which claims that at least nine studios are all bidding to secure the duo’s next project, a UFO conspiracy thriller that won’t be a million miles away from the 1990s TV phenomenon, The X Files.
Read more: Top Gun: Maverick review | Crikey
According to the outlet, “Amazon, Apple, Lionsgate, Paramount and Warner Bros are among the studios vying for the project” with the bids escalating “quickly and aggressively.”
Zach Baylin, the writer behind Creed III, King Richard and The Order (a film we really enjoyed) has penned the script, which is being described as “All The President’s Men with UFOs.”
If all of that isn’t fascinating enough, this final tidbit is particularly enticing.
Per the report, Former United States Air Force officer David Grusch is “acting as a consultant on the project.” In 2023, Grusch testified before US Congress, stating the government has been “studying the spacecraft and bodies of aliens” while continually blocking information from being revealed to the public.
A real-life UFO consultant on the film giving advice about real-life UFOs? Perhaps Mulder really was onto something after all.
Either way, it will be fascinating to see the shape this film takes. And with Steven Spielberg also heading back to the genre, we could be in for a stellar (excuse the pun) couple of years for films about visitors from the stars.
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We’ll bring you more as we hear it. If you’d like to hear Joseph Kosinski chat about Top Gun: Maverick on the Film Stories podcast, step this way.
