Brad Pitt's New F1 Movie Sure Sounds Like Stallone's Driven

The pitch for the upcoming Formula 1 film from Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski sounds familiar to fans of the Tom Cruise-led blockbuster: retired F1 racer Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) comes back well after his prime to mentor promising young driver Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) at a struggling team. Unfortunately, that premise is also familiar to anyone who has seen history's least-celebrated major auto racing movie, Driven.

If you are not familiar with Driven, the film stars Sylvester Stallone as retired CART driver Joe Tanto. He comes back well after his prime to mentor promising young driver Jimmy Bly (Kip Pardue) at an underperforming team. There is a lot more to it than that, most notably an all-time nonsensical car chase scene in a movie that is already about closed circuit car racing and a brutal 14 percent on RottenTomatoes, but the skeleton sure looks similar to what Kosinski's project promises.

Of course, Driven is not the only movie to play on a mentor-prodigy relationship. Stallone himself starred in and helped write an excellent one in the Rocky legacy sequel Creed. What makes this new movie more Driven than Maverick is the choice to actually have the mentor racing at an age where a return is unrealistic for anyone but Mario Andretti. Pitt is 59. Stallone was 54 when Driven was filmed. The oldest current Formula 1 driver, Fernando Alonso, is 41. The oldest IndyCar driver is 48-year-old Helio Castroneves, but he is already three years into his movie-perfect second career arc as an Indianapolis 500 winner for an upstart team.