People love to see legendary duos on the big screen, especially if the movie is of the action genre. And just like these, people have also missed out on several movies which could have featured a couple of legendary actors together but were unable to collaborate for whatever reasons. One such movie where we could have a stunning duo is Ford vs Ferrari, which is in the likes of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.
Brad Pitt is currently gearing up for his upcoming racing movie, F1, directed by Joseph Kosinski, who earned huge success previously by directing Top Gun: Maverick in 2022.
The fact that Joseph Kosinski is a blockbuster giver and Brad Pitt is in the driver’s seat has eventually made the upcoming F1 movie a highly anticipated project. It is going to be released in the summer.
However, talking about collaborations, this isn’t the only time Brad Pitt and Kosinski have been linked to a racing movie. In 2013, both were engaged in a project based on A.J. Baime’s book Go Like Hell, and the best part of? Tom Cruise was in talks about the movie as well.
However, the anticlimax is that all of them left the project, but the idea revived again in 2019 as the Ford vs Ferrari movie came into talks.
The Ford vs Ferrari movie was initially planned and also designed with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in the picture and not Matt Damon and Christian Bale. Sources revealed that Cruise was set to play the role of Carroll Shelby and Pitt to play Ken Miles, but the roles eventually went to Damon and Bale, respectively, and the movie also went on to become an Oscar winner.
Kosinski, on the other hand, got involved around 2013, a few years after Michael Mann was attached.
However, the film fell apart over money. Kosinski, at a 2020 Comic-Con at Home panel hosted by Collider, recalled – “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.” He added, “I always wanted to make a racing film.”
Though this particular idea remained a dream but we still got to see Ford v Ferrari which was beautifully portrayed by James Mangold, with Damon and Bale delivering incredible performances. The film was not only a box office hit, by grossing over $225 million worldwide but also won two Oscars.
Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt reunited on the #F1TheMovie red carpet in London.
The film's director, Joseph Kosinski, originally planned to have the actors race together in his version of "Ford v Ferrari" but says the studio would not approve his budget. James Mangold ended up… pic.twitter.com/kXmhUMvVuv
— Variety (@Variety) June 23, 2025
Kosinski gladly talked about the final product and praised it in that same 2020 panel. “I thought [Mangold] did an excellent version and I thought Christian Bale and Matt Damon nailed the characters,” he said. “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.”
