According to the Deadline, award-winning actor Damson Idris has been tapped to co-star opposite Brad Pitt in a new Apple Original’s Formula 1 racing film.
The actor secured the role after months of meetings, auditions and even several days of driving tests. Director Joseph Kosinski will helm the movie. He will also produce his untitled feature alongside Jerry Bruckheimer and Chad Oman of Jerry Bruckheimer Films (Top Gun: Maverick), seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton through his Dawn Apollo banner and Plan B, with Copper CEO Penni Thow serving as executive producer.
Producers have been meeting with prospects for the role going all the way back to November, with Kosinski, Bruckheimer and Apple execs seeing dozens of actors. At the top of the year the lists were cut down to a handful of actors, with Idris making the final cut. Besides doing a number of screen tests, actors also had to show they had the goods to handle the film’s intense driving scenes and were put through a number of driving tests in January. Kosinski is big on using natural effects after going a similar route when he put his actors in real fighter jets for Top Gun: Maverick; he hopes for the same with Formula One race cars in this film.
The untitled feature follows Pitt as a racer who comes out of retirement to mentor a younger driver and take his final stab at glory on the track as the younger driver’s teammate.
Apple landed the package in one of 2022s biggest deals. At the time, sources told Deadline the package was in the $130 million-$140 million range, before above-the-line compensation. That puts it in line with several big package deals made last year, the kind that seem perfectly suited to streamers that need content but are still getting up to speed on the development front.
Idris broke onto the scene with his acclaimed role in the FX series Snowfall. The show’s final season just premiered, and he has been looking for that next big role as his schedule opened up. He was also recently seen in Amazon’s Swarm. He is repped by CAA, M88 and attorney John Meigs.
