Brad Pitt's newest outing, , has hit a major box office milestone for a variety of reasons. The movie stars Pitt as Sonny Hayes, a Formula 1 driver who teams up with young hotshot Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) after an accident kept him off the track for many years. The cast also includes Kerry Condon and Javier Bardem.

The F1 The Movie box office has been performing extremely well since the Brad Pitt project premiered on June 27. During its opening weekend alone, it grossed $57 million at the domestic box office, which marks.

Since then, it has zoomed past a number of major milestones. At the end of its first full week in theaters, on July 3, F1 The Movie reached a worldwide gross of $172.7 million. It has now landed at

Additionally, this total means that it has become only. There are a wide variety of possible reasons why F1 The Movie has been able to accomplish these milestones so quickly.

One potential reason that viewers have been keen to see F1 The Movie is the fact that the movie has earned a cavalcade of positive reviews. At the time of writing, Rotten Tomatoes has aggregated 293 different critics' reviews of the movie. 242 of those were positive, earning the release .

This collection of reviews includes one from ScreenRant's own Mae Abdulbaki, who. Read an excerpt from her F1 The Movie review below:

The characters are easy to root for, the relationship buildup is well-paced and occasionally complex, and the racing itself is heart-pounding. F1 has all the elements of a classic underdog movie, but also pits the old against the new in a way that is fresh and intense. There’s not a moment you don’t want Sonny and Joshua... to suck it up and start working together as a team, but it’s a jog and not a sprint to get there. By the time they do, it’s a monumental moment that is earned.

F1 The Movie also . Some reviews were published early, more than a full week before the movie's debut, following its premiere at Radio City Music Hall on June 16. If these early writeups had given the movie a Rotten score at the time, it could have capsized the release.

However, F1 earned a variety of glowing reviews that gave it a similarly Fresh score early on, before even more were added, putting it at its current Certified Fresh level. during the lead-up to its release.

While critics had already given F1 The Movie the green light, audiences responded even better on Rotten Tomatoes. At the time of writing, there are more than 5,000 verified ratings from viewers on the website, earning the Brad Pitt movie , improving on the Tomatometer score by nearly 15%.

In addition to the vast majority of audience reviews being positive, the average score of those 5,000 reviews is 4.7 out of 5, indicating that .

Audiences have also responded positively to the movie on a number of other user review platforms. At the time of writing,, 7.9 out of 10 on IMDb, 7.6 out of 10 on Metacritic, and 8.6 out of 10 on ScreenRant's own user review platform.

around the movie, convincing viewers who may have been on the fence about seeing it to give it a shot.

Another aspect of F1 The Movie that has helped it thrive is the fact that it stars Brad Pitt. , when he broke out thanks to his role as J.D. in 1991's Thelma & Louise. Since then, he has gone on to titanic success, both critically and commercially.

Overall, Brad Pitt movies have , with some of the highest-grossing being 2013's World War Z ($531.9 million), 2005's Mr. and Mrs. Smith ($486.1 million), 2004's Troy ($483.1 million), 2001's Ocean's Eleven ($450.7 million), and 2019's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood ($377.4 million).

(as a producer for 12 Years a Slave and an actor for Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood) alongside five other nominations (as an actor for 12 Monkeys, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Moneyball, and as a producer for Moneyball and The Big Short).

Additionally, F1 The Movie is , when he starred in Bullet Train and Babylon. While neither of those movies were major hits, his nearly three-year absence from the big screen has likely fueled increased interest in his new project.

The lingering aura of the massive success that was 2022's Top Gun: Maverick could also be a reason for F1 The Movie's performance. , becoming the second highest-grossing movie of that year behind only Avatar: The Way of Water.

In addition to reuniting Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski, screenwriter Ehren Kruger, and producer Jerry Bruckheimer, to flying by bringing the adrenaline-pumping thrills of Formula 1 racing to the screen. This all seems to have appealed to the same fans who propelled the earlier movie toward the top of the charts.

Even though F1 The Movie is not part of a pre-existing film franchise, . The popularity of the motor sport allowed the movie to access a wide global fan base even though viewers didn't already have a connection to its characters.

This is a similar approach to the one that made 2023's Barbie such a huge box office success. By merely taking place within the world of Formula 1, .

In addition to bringing viewers even closer to the action, . This is accomplished in many ways, including featuring cameos from more than two dozen real-life Formula 1 drivers and eight personnel members.

Thanks to the production working with Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, the organization behind Formula 1, to make the onscreen action as realistic as possible.

While this was not a concern outside the United States, the F1 The Movie release kicked off just one weekend before the Fourth of July holiday. , which is why the new release Jurassic World Rebirth premiered midweek on Wednesday rather than Friday.

Given the fact that F1 The Movie was still in the middle of the first week of its run on Wednesday, during that period. That additional boost helped its first full week reach its astounding heights.

Another factor that likely helped F1 The Movie find its audience is the fact that . From Memorial Day through the premiere of F1, the only two movies that had taken No. 1 at the domestic box office were the live-action remakes Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon.

The arrival of the PG-13-rated came at the perfect time to combat family movie fatigue with a major adult-oriented blockbuster. While it faces major competition from the PG-13 titles of July, including Jurassic World Rebirth, Superman, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, being the first of that slate also helped it stand out.