With Brad Pitt‘s star power at the center of the screen and Joseph Kosinski‘s propulsive directing talent behind the camera, the forthcoming racing drama F1 promises to be one of the most exciting and financially lucrative theatrical releases of the summer. Kosinski — who has already given us one of the greatest summer blockbusters of the decade with the release of Top Gun: Maverick in 2022 — is now hoping to recapture that same magic by trading in Tom Cruise in the cockpit of a fighter jet for Pitt at the wheel of a race car.
Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first time Kosinski and Pitt’s names have been attached to a racing film. Back in 2013, the two nearly came together to work on a different autosport tale based on the book Go Like Hell by A.J. Baime, with Cruise along for the ride as well. Though all three men eventually left the project, it remained a story that Hollywood was interested in telling. In fact, it ended up finding a new director, two equally impressive movie stars, and massive success six years later as the Best Picture-nominated Ford v Ferrari.
‘Ford v Ferrari’ Was Originally Meant to Star Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise Rather Than Matt Damon and Christian Bale
Though the list of actors who could conceivably combine to become a bigger charismatic force and greater box office draw than Matt Damon and Christian Bale is quite short, Cruise and Pitt are certainly near the top of it. That’s why it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the duo, whose only on-screen collaboration remains 1994’s Interview With a Vampire, were the first choices to star in Ford v Ferrari. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cruise was initially going to portray Carroll Shelby — the part that ultimately went to Damon — while Pitt was set to play Ken Miles, the eventual Bale role. Kosinski joined the project around 2013, a few years after Michael Mann was first attached to direct.
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Things would’ve been very different.
Like many abandoned Hollywood productions, Kosinski’s version of the film fell apart due to budgeting and financial issues. During a Comic-Con at Home panel in 2020 hosted by Collider, the director said, “I got to the point where I had Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt at a table read, reading the script together. But we couldn’t get the budget to the number it had to be at, and it was the right number. So that was the one for me that got away.” At the time, the dissolution of this particular film seemed like a bit of a heartbreaking moment for Kosinski, as he said in the same panel that “I always wanted to make a racing film.” Fortunately for him, he finally got his chance to make his racing movie just over a decade later with F1.
‘Ford v Ferrari’ Found Tremendous Success Even Without Pitt and Cruise
Pitt, Cruise, and Kosinski would have assuredly made an incredibly effective and acclaimed version of Ford v Ferrari. That being said, as far as consolation prizes go, it would be extremely hard to do better than Damon, Bale, and James Mangold. The final movie they created in 2019 received widespread acclaim, earned four Oscar nominations, won two, and grossed over $225 million at the worldwide box office. For what is ultimately a sports flick, that is not too shabby.
A big part of the reason Ford v Ferrari worked as well as it did is because of the performances given by Damon and Bale. Damon’s magnetic and integrity-driven everyman quality made him the perfect fit for Shelby, while Bale’s gifts as a physical performer and chameleonic approach allowed him to transform flawlessly into the volatile and fiery Ken Miles. Sure, Pitt and Cruise could have pulled it off but it’s tough to watch the work done by Damon and Bale and come away with the conclusion that anyone could have been drastically better than those two were. Kosinski even sang the film’s praises in that same 2020 Comic-Con conversation, saying, “I thought [Mangold] did an excellent version and I thought Christian Bale and Matt Damon nailed the characters,” before adding, “I actually saw it with Tom and we were both thrilled when we saw it. It’s a weird thing to see someone make a movie of something that you had kind of got close to making, but they did an amazing job with it.”
While there is still something undeniably compelling about the version of Ford v Ferrari we never got to see — especially considering the buzz surrounding F1 and the extraordinarily high heights Cruise and Kosinski reached with Maverick—it’s safe to say that things worked out for the best for everyone. The film audiences did receive was outstanding and, if Kosinski had made his version of it instead, he and Pitt probably never would have come together to make F1. There’s also no need to mourn the fact that we didn’t get a chance to see Cruise behind the wheel because talks of a Days of Thunder sequel are continuously heating up.
