You Can Now Buy a Digital Copy of ‘F1: The Movie’
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While there’s no arguing that Apple’s new blockbuster F1 flick is best seen on the big screen, those unwilling to brave the lineups and crowds at their local IMAX cineplex can now pick up a digital copy for viewing in the comfort of their own home theatre system.
Today’s release lines up with the report we saw earlier this week from WhenToStream, which predicted the movie would hit the first digital platforms on August 22. While that report came from insider sources and lacked any official confirmation, it turns out it was right on the money.
However, as we also predicted, today’s release is limited to premium video on demand (PVOD) services. That means that while you can rent or purchase F1 in the “Store” section of Apple’s TV app (what was once part of the iTunes Store), it’s not available on Apple TV+ yet — and probably won’t be for another few weeks based on the usual schedule for such things.
Like most such releases, they also aren’t cheap. You’ll pay $20 to rent the movie for a 48-hour viewing period, or $25 to buy it outright. That’s why they’re called premium on-demand services. The purchase price will undoubtedly drop once F1 comes to Apple TV+, but of course, at that point, subscribers will be able to stream F1 as often as they like at no extra cost.
Theatrical movie releases typically move to PVOD services such as iTunes and Amazon Prime Video around 45 days after release. It usually takes another 6–8 weeks after that before they land on streaming services and physical media.
For example, Apple’s first big theatrical release, Killers of the Flower Moon, opened in theaters on October 20, 2023, came to PVOD on December 5, and arrived on Apple TV+ on January 12, 2024. Napoleon followed a similar schedule: in theaters on November 22, 2023, PVOD on January 9, 2024, and Apple TV+ on March 1. Argylle had a much shorter release cycle of February 2, March 5, and April 12, 2024, but that’s not too surprising considering how poorly it did at the box office; critics have been hard on many of Apple’s films, but Variety panned that one as an “unmitigated disaster” financially.
That’s not the case with F1: The Movie, which has turned out to be Apple’s most successful film of all time by a healthy margin. All three of its last “blockbuster” films together took in only $466 million at the box office. F1 blew past that in less than a month and now sits at $595 million worldwide as of this writing.
That suggests it’s far more likely to follow the traditional schedule. Today’s PVOD releases are already late by normal standards, as it’s been 56 days since June 27, when F1 first arrived in theaters. By comparison, Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon only took 46 and 48 days to make the move to PVOD, putting them both much closer to the 45-day average for such things. At 32 days, Argylle was an outlier in the other direction.
The longer timeframe may have been partly due to Apple’s desire to give F1 another expanded run in IMAX theaters earlier this month. It returned to “select” IMAX theaters on August 8, which would have been the 42-day mark, and came to many more locations last Friday, August 15.
Apple has yet to announce an Apple TV+ premiere date, and won’t likely do so until a week or two before it happens. Previous Apple Original Films have taken between 38 days (Argylle) and 52 days (Napoleon), and we’d expect F1 to be on the longer end of that; since major new Apple TV+ films and shows usually debut on Fridays, that likely means we won’t see it before October 10, which is only 49 days away, but a film this popular could easily end up being pushed to the the 17th or the 24th.
