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You may or may not be aware that Brad Pitt is set to star in an untitled movie project currently being filmed, where he is a Formula One driver. I’m not aware that there has ever been an F1 driver still racing in their 60s, but no one has ever accused Hollywood of paying attention to facts and logic. I don’t know much about the project, but if it is starring Pitt – I’m guessing it has a fairly large budget.

I’ve seen where some fans are wringing their hands on this, and are considering it as another example of IndyCar dragging it’s feet and missing out on attracting young fans to the sport. I disagree.

First of all, we don’t know how good or bad this Brad Pitt movie will be. CART was on the cutting edge of developing a film project regarding an overage driver back in 2001. Driven fell just a little short of the mark in drawing in new fans, and it’s overage driver (Sylvester Stallone) was only 56 – not 60.

IndyCar’s detractors point to the Netflix series, Drive to Survive (DTS), and how it helped bolster F1 ratings as how IndyCar is falling behind. Keep in mind, that DTS was an afterthought after the first season was released on Netflix in March of 2019. It took a pandemic and lockdowns to make everyone suddenly discover it. It was more dumb luck on their part, than any grand marketing plan that suddenly made Daniel Ricciardo a household name. IndyCar did their best with a six-part 100 Days to Indy. It was well-produced, but was not laden with Formula One drama like DTS. I consider that a good thing, but I guess it’s not when you are trying to appeal to the masses.

Getting back to the movie starring Brad Pitt; this could be a real flop. Many racing movies are. There have been some good ones lately – like Ford vs Ferrari and Rush. I’ve not seen the new movie entitled simply Ferrari, but I’ve heard mixed reviews. It seems it is factual and there is a lot of attention to detail away from the race track. But I’ve also heard that some of the racing “action” is almost laughable, and is comparable to Driven regarding the ridiculous crash scenes. I can suspend a lot of reality when watching racing films, but when it comes to launching cars and CGI explosions – I have little patience with that.

The thing about racing movies is, they can go one of two ways. They can be factually correct and satisfy the racing nerds that will watch it; or it can be totally flawed and unwatchable to hard-core racing fans, but the general public will like it. That was the case with Days of Thunder. Racing fans scoffed at it, but the non-racing fans enjoyed it. Unfortunately, Driven didn’t appeal to anyone. I still maintain that Driven was not just the worst racing movie ever made – it was the worst movie ever made.

I took my then-12 year-old son to see Driven in the theater, when it came out. There were maybe twenty people in the theater when it started. When it was over, he and I were the only two people left. Everyone else thought of a million different ways to spend their time that was better than that. We stayed under the delusion that it might get better. It didn’t.

We stumbled across Driven on Netflix about a year ago and tried to watch it. Twenty minutes into it, I couldn’t take it anymore. Although I remembered it being bad, it was worse than I remembered.

The Brad Pitt film might be a viable project and end up like Rush, or it could be an updated version of Driven. We don’t really know, but since it appears to be totally fiction – I’m guessing it might be closer to Driven than Rush. I could be wrong, but when there is no factual story to serve as a guide like Rush or Ford vs Ferrari, that allows Hollywood imaginations to run wild. Lately, that has not been a good thing.

If IndyCar feels the need to have an IndyCar movie out there, let it be based on a true story. How about Foyt vs Andretti, or the story of Andy Granatelli and the turbines? I’ve always thought a story on the Unser brothers could make for a pretty entertaining movie. But another fictional account of Joe Tanto or Jimmy Bly probably needs to be left alone.

IndyCar had a slew of misfortune near the end of 2023. The first few weeks of 2024 have had a few positive bits announced, with no new bombshells. There are a lot of things the top-management with Penske Entertainment need to figure out in the next year or so; but fretting about the new upcoming Brad Pitt F1 movie is not one of them. Do we really want another Driven out there? Probably not.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on January 19, 2024 at 4:04 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.