Tim Cook Reveals Apple’s Vision for Movies and TV: Why Spending Millions on Blockbusters Like ‘F1’ Is About More Than Selling iPhones
Apple CEO and Formula 1 superstar Lewis Hamilton join forces on 'F1 the Movie' to take the tech giant's film business to new heights
Tim Cook and Lewis Hamilton are on top of the world. Or so it seems, as the CEO of Apple and the Formula 1 racing superstar stand on the deck of Apple Park’s observatory in Cupertino, California.
This high perch is the last stop on a tour of the 175-acre Apple Park campus that Cook is giving Hamilton on a sunny day in late April. It’s Hamilton’s first visit, despite having been in business with Apple since 2022 as a producer on “F1 the Movie” the $200 million-plus action movie from Apple Original Films that stars Brad Pitt and arrives in multiplexes on June 27.
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Apple and Hamilton are enormously invested in the film, and both have a lot to prove with its performance at the global box office. There’s no margin for error: “F1” will either soar to become one of the year’s biggest hits, or it will be considered a costly disappointment. It’s a high-stakes gamble on the world stage — the kind of “Let’s go for it!” risk that builds bonds between executives and creatives.
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On this breezy afternoon, however, the film’s opening-weekend reckoning is still eight weeks away, and there’s much work to be done to sell the movie to the masses. But in this moment, Cook wants to show off the breathtaking view to his starry guest.
“Is that San Jose?” Hamilton asks, pointing off in the distance at the dim outline of boxy office buildings. Cook, 64, nods, and the two survey the land all around them. It’s a quiet moment both seem to enjoy as they contemplate what each has riding on the release of “F1.”
Hamilton, 40, is a seven-time Formula 1 champion, one of the winningest race car drivers of all time and a trailblazer for inclusivity in sports and other fields. The U.K.-born prodigy who began racing at age 8 is also an entrepreneur, part owner of the Denver Broncos and a style icon with a growing apparel business called Plus44. Though Hamilton has traveled the world at 200 miles per hour, even he’s impressed by the rarefied air of Apple Park and the view he’s taking in overlooking Silicon Valley.
Not only is Hamilton about to celebrate the release of his first major film as a producer, but he’s still busy competing in the 2025 season of Formula 1, which began in March and ends in December. If Formula 1 devotees and fellow drivers don’t like the film, Hamilton will surely feel it on tour. He’s anything but worried: “If you look at previous racing movies,” he says, “it’s very hard to create the authentic racing feel. This is the best racing movie that’s ever been made.”
Cook, meanwhile, is marshaling considerable resources to support what is the splashiest movie-launch campaign in Apple’s short history of producing. The film, spearheaded by “Top Gun: Maverick” writer-director Joseph Kosinski, included a year’s worth of development on advanced camera technology to capture the sheer force of auto racing. Cook emphasizes that that same tech is baked into the camera of the latest iPhone model.
“F1” hails from Apple Original Films, Pitt’s Plan B, Jerry Bruckheimer Films and Hamilton’s Dawn Apollo banner. Warner Bros. is handling worldwide theatrical distribution. Hamilton and Apple have also teamed up for a feature-length documentary on his life that is expected to have a limited theatrical run. And there’s speculation that Apple may be a contender for U.S. TV rights to Formula 1 when the league’s current deal is up, starting with the 2026 season. Simply put, Apple is deeply invested in “F1.”
Weeks before tracking reports emerge to indicate “F1” is indeed highly anticipated by moviegoers, Cook asserts that he is confident the movie is worthy of the Apple brand. “You can feel that you’re in the car with the camera,” he says. “We cared about every detail.”
“F1” marks a big milestone for Apple in its expansion over the past half-dozen years of making movies and TV shows. Apple is banking on Kosinski and the team behind 2022’s hit “Top Gun: Maverick” to deliver a four-quadrant smash that will be measured as much for its impact on pop culture and filmmaking as it will be in box office receipts. In a best-case scenario, “F1” becomes the kind of sensation that launches a million memes and is the engine that accelerates the popularity of Formula 1 racing in the U.S. once and for all.
“F1” has been a passion project for Eddy Cue, the architect of Apple’s expansion into producing movies and TV shows. He’s an Apple veteran and racing buff who sits on the board of directors of Ferrari, Hamilton’s racing team. His dreams for the film are loftier even than a nine-figure opening weekend: “I hope that when most people go see the movie, they walk out wanting to be a race car driver,” says Cue.
In Cook’s view, “F1” is the perfect vehicle to test Apple’s power to affect culture with the soft power of a broad-appeal movie rather than through the hardware of its computers and smartphones.
“To bring something to life that would be authentic to the sport, that would tell a great story as well about the ups and downs of life — ‘F1’ hit on all the things,” Cook says. “And then we could bring some things that are uniquely Apple to the movie, like our camera technology. And we plan to have the whole of the company support it as well — our retail operation and everything. So it was something that we could get the entire company around. It feels wonderful to be a part of it.”
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Kosinski felt the Apple touch throughout the making of the movie. With Apple’s support and Hamilton’s connections, Kosinski was permitted to film “F1” at numerous Grand Prix races during the 2023 and 2024 seasons. The movie’s racing production crew became the unofficial 11th team on the circuit, complete with its own paddock in the heart of the action in order to better capture racing sequences.
At times, Kosinski had as many as 28 cameras running simultaneously at key events. It added up to more than 5,000 hours when the flag came down on the 2024 season.
“The world of F1 is about pushing boundaries technologically — it’s embedded in the sport,” Kosinski says. “It meshed well with the whole Apple vibe.” He adds that the film “ended up being an incredible partnership between two giant brands. It was needed to pull this off.”
Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer behind “Top Gun,” “Flashdance,” “Beverly Hills Cop” and “CSI,” agrees. “This was an enormous production,” he says. “I’ve never seen a company throw everything they had at a movie like this.”
As befitting a company that measures its market cap in trillion-dollar increments ($3.1 trillion as of June 2), Apple’s bar for success is high. Steve Jobs, the company’s late co-founder and Cook’s
predecessor as CEO, established early on that the Apple brand was something to be revered and protected. Jobs was light-years ahead of the pack in understanding the immense value for a tech firm of building a titanium-strength consumer brand that is synonymous with innovation, creativity and coolness. The apple-shaped logo and what it stands for in the minds of consumers is an incalculable part of that $3 trillion valuation.
Like Cue, Cook has a clear vision for what Apple TV+ and Apple Original Films bring to the company. “We stand at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts,” Cook says. “We wanted Apple TV+ to be a place where great storytellers
would tell their best stories.”
Apple TV+ opened for business in November 2019. Cue and Cook both observe that 2025 marks the first time in the service’s history that it will roll out a carefully planned full-year slate without the extra burden of managing around a global pandemic or the two strikes in 2023 that blew a six-month hole in production pipelines. “I finally feel like we’re at the point where our slate hasn’t been impacted by the strikes or by COVID,” Cue says.
Apple could have easily M&A’d its way into the industry, buying a major studio or entertainment library. The company, which has $30 billion in cash reserves, can certainly afford to write the kind of big check that could make a deal happen overnight. But build rather than buy has been the Apple ethos ever since Jobs and co-founder Steve Wozniak were laboring in their garage in the mid-1970s.
“We elected not to go out and procure a catalog. I know that’s a faster way into the business, but it didn’t feel like Apple at the end of the day,” Cook says. “Apple should have something that we pour our passion into, and that’s exactly what we’re doing with the shows. And now you can see us hitting a stride. It feels wonderful.”
In conversation, Cook speaks slowly and softly, with a Southern lilt that reflects his Alabama roots. He’s thoughtful and methodical in answering questions in a voice that is both calming and authoritative.
When pressed about what Apple’s investments in movies and TV shows have meant for the company as a whole, Cook explains that Apple is at heart “a toolmaker,” delivering computers and other devices that enable creativity in users. (This vision for the company, and the “toolmaker” term specifically, was first articulated by Jobs in the early 1980s.) “We’re a toolmaker,” Cook says again. “We make tools for creative people to empower them to do things they couldn’t do before. So we were doing lots of business with Hollywood well before we were in the TV business.
“We studied it for years before we decided to do [Apple TV+]. I know there’s a lot of different views out there about why we’re into it. We’re into it to tell great stories, and we want it to be a great business as well. That’s why we’re into it, just plain and simple.”
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Indeed, Apple has faced questions from Wall Street about the larger strategy around its investment in movies and TV. The company, unlike most other streamers, doesn’t disclose how many Apple TV+ subscribers it has signed up; nor does it break out financial results for the service, which it lumps in with its “Services” segment, along with revenue from music, games, the App Store and more.
Media analysts and observers have wondered how the content side of Apple threads together with the hardware sales that fuel the core business. As Cook sees it, that’s not the point, although such connections are emerging organically in the course of doing business, as evidenced by “F1” and the camera tech. “I don’t have it in my mind that I’m going to sell more iPhones because of it,” Cook says. “I don’t think about that at all. I think about it as a business. And just like we leverage the best of Apple across iPhones and across our services, we try to leverage the best of Apple TV+.”
Since Donald Trump took office in January, Apple has faced a new business threat from the administration’s campaign to enact steep tariffs on imported goods — and iPhones specifically.
Cook said on Apple’s May 1 earnings call that Trump’s tariffs would add $900 million in costs in the June quarter. He said that predicting the effect past then would be very difficult, given the uncertainty of the situation. That came after Cook announced in February that Apple would invest $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, a pledge Trump proudly heralded.
Apple certainly didn’t need to charge into the volatile world of show business. But a decade ago, with the streaming wars and the Peak TV expansion boom on the horizon, Cue sensed opportunity. “We’ve always thought that art was a big piece of the DNA of who we are,” he says. “But we never expected to be creating movies or TV shows.” Yet as streaming platforms proliferated, “we saw that the world was changing, and it seemed like everybody was going after quantity. We thought there was an opening for us, if we really focused on high quality,” he says.
Cue is the ultimate Silicon Valley insider, having been with Apple since 1989. This was during the bad old days, after Jobs had been elbowed out of his own company in 1985.
By 1997, a debt-laden Apple barely escaped having to file for bankruptcy. Jobs returned as CEO in a rescue mission later that year. Three years later, Apple would be reborn, starting out on its 2001-10 run of unleashing world-shaking devices and services including the iPod, iPhone, iPad and iTunes. Cook, who joined Apple in 1998, had the formidable challenge of stepping into the top leadership role after Jobs died in 2011.
Cue was the natural choice to lead Apple’s entertainment push. The executive got his start at Apple leading software engineering and customer support teams. He rose to the senior ranks after playing an instrumental role in launching crucial businesses that supported Apple’s main business of selling phones, computers and tablets. He helped create Apple’s first online store in 1998. That was followed by the Herculean job of negotiating with the largest music labels to launch the pay-per-download iTunes Music Store in 2003. In 2008, Cue steered the launch of Apple’s App Store.
In hindsight, iTunes and the App Store were steppingstones for Apple to move squarely into the world of media and entertainment. More so than Silicon Valley neighbors like Google and Facebook, Apple has put its money and its reputation on the line to produce TV series and big-budget movies like 2023’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Martin Scorsese’s $200 million, three-and-a-half-hour period epic.
It took Cue two years of scouting and seeking recommendations from entertainment industry veterans to find the right leaders for Apple’s move into Hollywood. In 2017, Apple enlisted Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht as heads of Apple Worldwide Video, encompassing all TV and film activity for the company. At the time, Van Amburg and Erlicht were co-heads of Sony Pictures Television and were riding high on the much-lauded AMC Network drama series “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul.”
Two years later, the Apple TV+ streaming platform debuted, as did Disney+. Disney had “The Mandalorian,” which commanded attention from the start, and Apple had “The Morning Show,” with Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston and Billy Crudup. Nine months after launch, in the teeth of the pandemic, Apple TV+ fielded a worldwide success with the feel-good vibes of Jason Sudeikis in “Ted Lasso” in August 2020.
The service’s run of late — Seth Rogen’s “The Studio,” Jon Hamm-starrer “Your Friends and Neighbors,” Season 2 of “Severance,” Jason Segel and Harrison Ford in “Shrinking,” Gary Oldman in “Slow Horses,” Cate Blanchett in “Disclaimer,” Kristen Wiig and Carol Burnett in “Palm Royale,” Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Connelly in “Dark Matter” — has been particularly strong. Like the smooth blond wood and sanded white marble in the buildings at Apple Park, the list of A-listers doing business with Apple goes on forever.
“We’ve worked five and a half years to become an overnight success,” Van Amburg jokes.
Ben Stiller, executive producer of “Severance,” credits Van Amburg, Erlicht and Cue for establishing a nurturing and close-knit environment for creatives to work in. “They’re very open to the back and forth that comes with the creative process,” he says. “It feels very familial. They really care about what they’re making, and they reach out on a personal level.”
The film side for Apple, headed by Matt Dentler, has been a slower build amid the strain of pandemic shutdowns. Last year, Apple did a last-minute about-face on plans for a wide theatrical release of “Wolfs,” starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, in part because of tepid reviews. That move spurred questions about the company’s commitment to theatrical exhibition for its films.
Erlicht says the campaign around “F1” will put that chatter to rest. He emphasizes that the film is designed to deliver what exhibitors say they want most: movies with broad appeal. In the spirit of “Top Gun,” “F1” hinges on a heart-tugging redemption story for Pitt’s character, Sonny Hayes. Hayes was tailor-made for Pitt and crafted to be seen on the biggest of screens.
“Just because something is unapologetically commercial, which ‘F1’ is, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t achieve the highest level of quality in that process,” Erlicht says. “The film achieves everything you could hope for in a pure adrenaline racing film. And we have incredible characters with relatable human emotions. That was a critical component. This is a film that really speaks to our belief in the film industry.”
The investment in time and technology to deliver “F1” paid off in the look and feel of the film. The movie straddles a wiggly line between an original concept and a franchise vehicle with the level of Formula 1 access that is baked into every frame – thanks to Hamilton’s commitment to making an eye-popping picture, Van Amburg says.
Helmer Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda, also a “Top Gun: Maverick” alum, brought the right mix directorial finesse and emotional drama to the table, he adds.
Kosinski’s “technical prowess and innovation is only matched by his skill as director telling human stories of vulnerability and honesty,” Van Amburg says. “I’d say ‘F1’ is as close to big global IP as it comes. So as much as I’d say it’s a completely original film, we’re going into it with a tremendous partner. We had a garage on pit lane between Mercedes and Ferrari, and you had Brad Pitt and Damson Idris out on the grid doing qualifying laps and out there racing. So we had unparalleled access and a tremendous supporter.”
For Erlicht and Van Amburg, the confluence of “F1” arriving at a time when Apple TV+’s original series slate is also feels like a validation of all the sweat equity that Apple’s leadership has invested across the board since they decided to go for it with original content.
“Now we’ve got this rhythm,” Van Amburg says. “We can put new things out every single week. We have a couple thousand hours of originals and over 300 titles that you can engage with. We have more returning series that we’ve ever had. We have sequels to movies that were big successes for us. So we’ve never felt better.”
In 2018, when Lewis Hamilton learned that Tom Cruise and Joseph Kosinksi were working on a follow-up to 1986’s “Top Gun,” he reached out to Cruise for Kosinski’s contact info. Hamilton sent the director a letter expressing his interest in a supporting role in the film. The two discussed the possibility of Hamilton taking on the character of Lt. Mickey “Fanboy” Garcia.
But in time it became apparent that Hamilton couldn’t shoot the film in California and keep his day job as a Formula 1 driver. So racing won out (and the role went to actor Danny Ramirez).
Hamilton is candid about the fact that he’s coming to a crossroads in his professional life. Racing is mostly a young person’s game. But Hamilton, who has 39 million-plus Instagram followers, will have no shortage of opportunities when he does retire from the track. (Just last month, his profile in the fashion industry got a huge boost when he co-chaired the Met Gala with Anna Wintour.) Being a player in the world of TV and film is one of them.
“At some point, I have to stop racing,” he says. “I really, really love film, and I’m really, really excited about building Dawn Apollo and bringing in the right people. To have a partner like Apple supporting me through that process? There’s no greater partner that I could have chosen to work with.”
But it was Kosinski who reached out to Hamilton a few years after their “Maverick” exchange, when the director set his sights on making “F1.” He’d become fascinated with the sport after binge-watching episodes of Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” during the pandemic.
Kosinski, Hamilton and Bruckheimer had a meeting at San Vicente Bungalows in West Hollywood to discuss a movie that would deliver unprecedented visuals and a crowd-pleasing story with a bona fide movie star in Pitt. Hamilton then used every ounce of goodwill that he had with the league to get access for the film team. Hamilton and other Formula 1 drivers make brief appearances as themselves in the movie.
“Lewis said to me in the beginning, ‘I’ve never seen footage in film that captures what it’s like to drive in one of these cars,’” Kosinski says. “That’s the challenge he gave me.”
That was three years ago. As Cook and Hamilton talk up the movie’s prospects at Apple Park, it’s evident that the comfort and safety of the campus is a world apart from rough-and-tumble auto racing. It’s also far removed from heartland America, where the enthusiasm of moviegoers for “F1” will likely determine how long it stays in theaters. Cook and Cue know that the movie’s performance will be closely scrutinized because of the Apple logo out front.
Like Hamilton behind the wheel, Cook believes strongly that the road to success is to focus on achieving the exceptional. Apple products have to be great, not just good. The movie business is no different.
“We really only do a few things. We only have a few products for the size of company we are. We pour all of ourselves in each one of those — and we do TV and movies the same way,” Cook says. “It’s about staying true to what Apple has always been. It’s about staying true to innovation, staying true to our North Star. And if you’re able to do that and entertain people in a great way, then we’re doing pretty good,” he says.
He adds, “I think the business of our being in this business will be good for us.”
Lewis Hamilton: Styling: Eric McNeal; Grooming: Jenna Nelson/The Wall Group/La Prairie; Suit: Calvin Klein Collection: Tim Cook: Styling: Chaise Dennis; Styling assistant: Lisette Gallo; Grooming: Evy Drew/Exclusive Artists; Jacket: Zegna; Shirt: Brunello Cucinelli; Jean: Brunello Cucinelli; Sneakers: Nike
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