“F1” has earned $293 million globally at the box office in just 10 days, surpassing the total theatrical earnings of Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” ($158 million) and Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” ($221 million), making it Apple’s top-grossing film to date.
That’s not a particularly difficult benchmark to break, since Apple has only released five films theatrically and two of them, “Fly Me to the Moon” ($42 million) and “Argylle” ($96 million), were outright flops.
Yet the ticket sales for “F1” are at least a step in the right direction for the fledgling studio’s theatrical ambitions. After Apple siphoned off a string of commercial misfires (with budgets at or above $200 million, neither “Killers of the Flower Moon” nor “Napoleon” were in danger of turning a theatrical profit), “F1” was considered an inflection point for the tech giant. There was a growing internal sense that if a crowd-pleaser like “F1” didn’t work on the big screen, Apple would be better off abandoning the movie business in favor of television. After all, the company has fielded plenty of small screen successes on Apple TV+ including “Severance” and “Ted Lasso.”
Positive word-of-mouth should contribute to the movie’s staying power, even as “F1” endures strong headwinds from “Jurassic World Rebirth” and upcoming blockbuster hopefuls like “Superman” and “Fantastic Four: The First Steps.” Outside of the United States and Canada, where “F1” has revved to $109.5 million, top-earning territories include China ($22 million), the United Kingdom ($17.3 million), Mexico ($12.3 million), France ($11.5 million) and Australia ($9.8 million).
MacDailyNews Take: Apple Studios finally has a box office hit!
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The post ‘F1’ surpasses ‘Napoleon’ as Apple’s highest-grossing film with $293 million and counting appeared first on MacDailyNews.
