By LINDSEY BAHR, Associated Press

“Top Gun: Maverick” filmmaker Joseph Kosinski came to Formula One like many Americans: “Drive to Survive.”

In that popular Netflix series, he saw the potential for a cinematic event, full of immersive thrills, the high stakes of the competitive racing world and the idea that your teammate could be your greatest rival.

“I don’t think there’s any other sport that’s quite like that,” Kosinski said. “It’s ripe for drama.”

FILE – Actors Brad Pitt, left, and Damson Idris appear on the grid before the British Formula One Grand Prix race at the Silverstone racetrack, Silverstone, England, on July 9, 2023, for the filming of “F1.” (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File)

The movies have loved car racing since their earliest days, and the popularity of F1 has exploded in recent years. Giving it the “Top Gun” treatment made sense. But it would take nearly four years for that dream to become “F1,” which is speeding into movie theaters on June 27.

It was a complex operation that would involve unprecedented coordination with the league, groundbreaking innovation in camera technology, and letting one of the biggest movie stars in the world, Brad Pitt, drive a real race car at 180 miles an hour on film. Many, many times.

Getting F1 on board

Hollywood, it turned out, was a little easier to convince to make the film than the league. By the time Kosinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer approached them, Pitt had already agreed to star and they’d decided to go with Apple to help make the movie at the level they needed, with the guarantee of a robust theatrical release (which Warner Bros. is handling). Then came the Formula One meeting.

“When you come in, the first thing they think is you’re going to make them look bad,” Bruckheimer said. “I went through this with when I went to the Navy the first time on ‘Top Gun.’”

FILE – Actor Brad Pitt appears on the grid before the British Formula One Grand Prix race at the Silverstone racetrack, Silverstone, England on July 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File)

There were many concerns: About anything going wrong, accidents, and the question of the villain. But, the filmmakers explained, this story wasn’t about a villain. It’s a competition between two drivers — a younger driver (Damson Idris) and an older driver (Pitt) trying to make him better.

Bruckheimer said it took almost a year to get the league on board, and then they had to go around to the individual teams to explain it to them as well. But once everyone bought in, they committed and opened their world to the filmmakers.

“The amount of, let’s say, conversations regarding things not related to the actual filmmaking has been massive just from a coordination point of view,” Kosinski said. “But there’s no way we could have made this film without that partnership with Formula One.”

An image of actor Brad Pitt from the upcoming film “F1” is reflected in an advertisement for Tom Cruise’s new film “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” on the opening day of CinemaCon, the official convention of Cinema United, on Monday, March 31, 2025, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Among the things they got to do: Build a garage at the Grand Prix for their fictional team; Drive on the track during Grand Prix weekends in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators; Put their Formula One cars on the track with the film’s cars (and drivers); Have Pitt and Idris stand at the end of the national anthem in both Silverstone and Abu Dhabi; And sit in on drivers meetings and technical briefings.

“It was full-on integration of these two worlds coming together,” Kosinski said. “There’s no way the film could have happened or look like it does without that partnership. I think you’ll see the result of that on screen because you couldn’t recreate what we were able to capture by doing it for real.”

“We’re going to need a smaller camera”

In true “Top Gun” spirit, part of “doing it for real” meant trying to create the experience in the driver seat for the audience. Seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton, who was involved in the film from the earliest days, told Kosinski that he’d never seen a film that had really captured what it felt like to be in one of those cars.

“These Formula One cars, they deal in grams,” Kosinski said. “Adding 100 pounds of camera equipment works against the very thing you’re trying to capture. It became a technical engineering project for a year to figure out how to get very tiny cameras that are IMAX quality onto one of these cars.”

Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton of Britain steers his car during the Formula One Saudi Arabian Grand Prix at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Sunday, April 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Darko Bandic)

During “Top Gun: Maverick,” they had six Sony cameras inside the cockpit. Here, engineers were able to slim those down to about a quarter of the size (he estimates a 10×10 cm cube). Panavision also developed a remote control that allowed director of photography Claudio Miranda to pivot the cameras left and right, which they didn’t have on “Maverick.”

They had 15 camera mounts built into the cars and were able to run up to four at a time keeping the weight penalty to a minimum, and the close-ups real.

“Every time you see Brad or Damson’s face, they’re really driving that car,” Kosinski said. “It’s not being driven for them.”

And once it was go-time on the tracks, it was a race against the clock.

“It was a technical feat and an organizational feat,” Bruckheimer said. “You get limited access and we’d get in there between some of their qualifying laps and have eight minutes to get on the track and off the track. It’s precision, you can’t be at nine minutes.”

F1 driver Lewis Hamilton reacts during the official opening of the brand-new flagship Fanatics Collectibles store on Regent Street in London, Friday April 25, 2025. (Bradley Collyer/PA via AP)

When Hamilton first saw some of their racing footage cut together, Kosinski got a confidence boost.

“He smiled and said, ‘It looks fast,’” Kosinski said. “I was like, ‘Oh, thank God.’ If Lewis says that we’re in a good place.”

The Brad Pitt factor

“This movie needed an icon kind of at the center of it,” Kosinski said. “It’s a big, complicated, expensive film. And I needed one of our, you know, top, top movie stars.”

Kosinski knew Pitt liked cars. About a decade ago he, Tom Cruise and Pitt actually developed a car movie that never came to be. Plus, he said, “I just felt like it was a role that I always wanted to see him play.”

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Brad Pitt in a scene from “F1.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

The character is fictional driver named Sonny Hayes who was “the greatest who never was.” A phenomenon in the 1990s, he was destined to be the next world champion before an accident at a Grand Prix ends his Formula One career.

“Now he drives in every type of racing league you could imagine, but not Formula 1,” Kosinski said, from Le Mans to swamp trucks. “He likes to challenge himself to a new racing league and master it, but then he walks away.”

The audience meets him driving the midnight shift at the Daytona 24 hour race where he meets his old teammate and now Formula One team owner (Javier Bardem) who asks him to come back to help them win one race to save them from being sold.

“It’s a story about a last place team, a group of underdogs, and Sonny Hayes in his later years having one more chance to do something he was never able to, which is win a race in F1,” Kosinski said.

After the pitch, they went to the racetrack with Hamilton and Pitt “was hooked.”

Pitt trained for three months before cameras started rolling to get used to the physical demands of the precision vehicles. He and his co-star really drove the cars at speeds up to 180 mph, and sometimes in front of a couple hundred thousand people.

“The happiest day was when they said, ‘OK, it’s a wrap on driving,’ and he (Brad) climbed out of the car,” Bruckheimer said. “That was the best day for me because it is dangerous, it really is.”

The perfect summer blockbuster?

The film, everyone has acknowledged, was enormously expensive. They had the advantage of advertising on the cars, which helped offset some of the costs, but the operation was akin to building a real F1 team, Bruckheimer said. They built six cars, which they transported all around the world along with production.

“It’s like an army exercise moving vast groups of people and machinery around the world,” Bruckheimer said.

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But it was much less than the $300 million figure going around, both Kosinski and Bruckheimer said.

“It’s expensive, don’t get me wrong. It’s an expensive movie. But it was substantially lower than that number,” Bruckheimer said. “Hollywood is a very competitive place, and our friends sometimes inflate our budgets to make them look better.”

The biggest question is whether audiences will turn out in blockbuster numbers. So far, test scores have been very high across genders. And they promise you don’t need to be an expert or even a fan of the sport to enjoy the film, which will teach you everything you need to know.

“It’s emotional, it’s exciting, it has humor. It’s got great music with a Hans Zimmer score and a bunch of phenomenal artists,” Bruckheimer said. “We hope it’s a perfect summer movie.”

By LINDSEY BAHR, Associated Press

Superman already has a lot on his shoulders. It seems unfair to add the fate of the summer movie season to his list. But he’s not alone — Marvel Studios is also returning to theaters in a big way with two movies this summer, “Thunderbolts” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.”

Five years after the COVID-19 pandemic brought the movie business to a halt, and two years after the strikes, the industry has yet to fully recover. Critics may have complained of superhero fatigue, but after several summers of depleted offerings, it’s clear that they’re a vital part of the mix.

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows David Corenswet in a scene from “Superman.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

Superheroes alone don’t make for a healthy marketplace, however, and this year studios have set a full slate for every kind of moviegoer, with over 40 wide releases spanning genres.

“This is the summer where all this product that we’ve all been working on for the last few years is finally coming into the marketplace, so I’m very optimistic,” says Joseph Kosinski, who directed “F1” with Brad Pitt.

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Damson Idris, left, and Brad Pitt in a scene from “F1.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

Key movies in the summer 2025 lineup

Summer begins early in Hollywood, on the first weekend in May and that kick-off can make or break that pivotal 123 day corridor that has historically accounted for around 40% of the annual box office.

This image released by Disney shows the character Stitch, left, and Maia Kealoha, as Lilo, in a scene from “Lilo & Stitch.” (Disney via AP)

After the strikes upended the 2024 summer calendar, this year Disney is back in that familiar first weekend spot with “Thunderbolts.” Memorial Day weekend could also be a behemoth with the live action “Lilo & Stitch” and “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning.” With a new “Jurassic World,” a live action “How to Train Your Dragon” and the Formula One movie also on the schedule through June and July, the summer season has the potential to be the biggest in the post-COVID era.

There are also family pics (“Smurfs,” “Elio”); action and adventures (“Ballerina,” “The Karate Kid: Legends”); horrors, thrillers and slashers (“28 Years Later,” “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “M3GAN 2.0″); romances (“Materialists,” “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life”); dramas (“Sorry, Baby,” “The Life of Chuck”); a new Wes Anderson movie (“The Phonecian Scheme”); and comedies (“Freakier Friday,” “Bride Hard,” “The Naked Gun”).

This image released by Marvel Studios shows, from left, Hannah John-Kamen, Olga Kurylenko, Wyatt Russell, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour and Florence Pugh in a scene from “Thunderbolts.” (Disney-Marvel Studios via AP)

“Draw me a blueprint of a perfect summer lineup: 2025 is it,” says Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore.

What this summer’s big directors are saying

“It’s a fun twist on what a movie like this could be,” says “Thunderbolts” director Jake Schreier.

This image released by Netflix shows Christopher McDonald, left, and Adam Sandler in a scene from “Happy Gilmore 2.” (Scott Yamano/Netflix via AP)

“It’s a personal journey for Superman that’s entirely new,” says “Superman” director James Gunn. “But it’s also about the robots and the flying dogs and all that stuff. It’s taking a very real person and putting them in the middle of this outrageous situation and outrageous world and playing with that. I think it’s a lot of fun because of that.”

“It’s working on an incredibly large scale in terms of world building, but it’s also no different from all of the great comedies and dramas that I’ve done,” says “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” director Matt Shakman. “In the end, it comes down to character, it comes down to relationships, it comes down to heart and humor.”

This image released by Universal Pictures shows Mason Thames in a scene from “How to Train Your Dragon.”, (Universal Pictures via AP)

“People say, like, do you feel pressure and the most pressure I feel is from myself as a fan and to Steven Spielberg, to not disappoint him,” says “Jurassic World Rebirth” director Gareth Edwards. “Weirdly what’s great about doing a Jurassic movie is that everybody knows deep down that like half the reason they’re in this business is because of that film and Steven’s work.”

Why summer 2025 might be a big one for movies

Before the pandemic, all but one summer since 2007 broke the $4 billion mark. Since 2020, only one has: 2023, led by “Barbie.”

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The unstable economy might work in the industry’s favor, at least when it comes to moviegoing. Even with increased ticket prices, theatrical movies remain the most affordable entertainment outside of the home and attendance tends to increase during recession years. The annual domestic box office crossed $10 billion for the first time in 2009.

“By the end of this summer, hopefully people aren’t talking about being in a funk anymore and it feels like we got our mojo back and we’re off to the races,” Kosinski, who directed the pandemic-era hit “Top Gun: Maverick,” says.

When oil painter Richard Abraham was growing up on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, he’d spend time in his local library’s art section.

Books on illustration and painting, he recalled, were right next to the section containing books about movies. As he worked his way through the shelves, he was struck by moody, mysterious stills of classic film actors like James Cagney and Greta Garbo.

At the time, he assumed he’d never actually watch many of the movies themselves; this was before VHS tapes were widely available, he said, and certainly before digital restoration techniques that now help old films look and sound better than they have in decades. But even as Abraham’s interests led him in other directions — including his mid-life career change about 25 years ago toward oil painting — he was still fascinated by Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Three paintings by Lowertown artist Richard Abraham hang at Lost Fox on April 8, 2025. The works depict, from right to left, mid-century actors Robert Mitchum, Anita Ekberg and Peter Lorre. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)

Emotional, close-up portraits of vintage movie actors comprise Abraham’s current exhibition, “Framing Film: Painting Cinema’s Shadows,” on view through the end of the month at Lost Fox, the Lowertown cafe at 213 E. 4th St., just a few blocks from Abraham’s loft studio.

When Abraham decided to move to the Twin Cities and become a painter in the late ’90s, he pursued a classical path in visual arts, studying oil painting and focusing on traditional subjects like still life and outdoor landscapes. He’s won plenty of awards for this work and regularly teaches classes in his studio, too.

And meanwhile, he has watched and rewatched dozens of the vintage films that once eluded him. Especially during the early pandemic, he said, black-and-white movies from the 1920s and ’30s became his “comfort food.”

The current old-Hollywood series was initially a personal pet project during that time period, he said, but he came to realize that, in depicting “these sweaty, desperate, film noir types,” he was able to convey the same sense of restrained drama and emotional resonance that characterizes his other work.

“I went away from just, ‘Oh, that’s a nice shot of Bette Davis’ to something where it feels like there’s consequences in the painting,” he said.

When Abraham is planning a painting, he’ll first watch the inspiration film a number of times, taking notes on well-composed scenes. He’ll then narrow down a list of a dozen or so still-frame shots before choosing his ultimate subject. The best frames to paint, he finds, are ones where harsh lighting creates deep contrasts, especially in faces — a visual sense of tension, secrecy, high stakes.

“It’s all about value, about depth, and finding images that accentuate that; that have a lot of shadow play on the face, so you have something to sink into,” he said. “And when it’s going well, you can really get lost in it. Like Robert Mitchum’s trenchcoat becomes its own world. You’re just in all the valleys and the buttons and the reflected light and deep shadows.”

(Interestingly, he said, male actors are more commonly shown this way than women, even in equally emotionally pivotal moments. Hard lighting and tight zoom accentuates facial wrinkles and creases, perhaps desirable for a rugged male character; women were more frequently shot in softer light or from wider angles to hide those features and appear glamorous.)

On view at Lost Fox is just a selection of the dozens of portraits Abraham has painted: There’s Giulietta Masina in “La Strada” and Anita Ekberg in “La Dolce Vita,” there’s Peter Lorre and Robert Ryan. He has about 20 more in the studio that didn’t make the show, including the first color portrait in the series — of Judy Garland in “The Wizard of Oz,” of course.

“One thing leads to another, and sometimes you can’t predict where that’s going to lead to and why,” he said. “You just follow it. I think you can drive yourself crazy justifying why you’re doing what, but I think just enthusiasm is justification enough. You follow what gets you excited to go to the easel.”

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By Susan Jaffe, KFF Health News

For several years, Fred Neary had been seeing five doctors at the Baylor Scott & White Health system, whose 52 hospitals serve central and northern Texas, including Neary’s home in Dallas. But in October, his Humana Medicare Advantage plan — an alternative to government-run Medicare — warned that Baylor and the insurer were fighting over a new contract. If they couldn’t reach an agreement, he’d have to find new doctors or new health insurance.

“All my medical information is with Baylor Scott & White,” said Neary, 87, who retired from a career in financial services. His doctors are a five-minute drive from his house. “After so many years, starting over with that many new doctor relationships didn’t feel like an option.”

After several anxious weeks, Neary learned Humana and Baylor were parting ways as of this year, and he was forced to choose between the two. Because the breakup happened during the annual fall enrollment period for Medicare Advantage, he was able to pick a new Advantage plan with coverage starting Jan. 1, a day after his Humana plan ended.

Other Advantage members who lose providers are not as lucky. Although disputes between health systems and insurers happen all the time, members are usually locked into their plans for the year and restricted to a network of providers, even if that network shrinks. Unless members qualify for what’s called a special enrollment period, switching plans or returning to traditional Medicare is allowed only at year’s end, with new coverage starting in January.

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But in the past 15 months, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which oversees the Medicare Advantage program, has quietly offered roughly three-month special enrollment periods allowing thousands of Advantage members in at least 13 states to change plans. They were also allowed to leave Advantage plans entirely and choose traditional Medicare coverage without penalty, regardless of when they lost their providers. But even when CMS lets Advantage members leave a plan that lost a key provider, insurers can still enroll new members without telling them the network has shrunk.

At least 41 hospital systems have dropped out of 62 Advantage plans serving all or parts of 25 states since July, according to Becker’s Hospital Review. Over the past two years, separations between Advantage plans and health systems have tripled, said FTI Consulting, which tracks reports of the disputes.

CMS spokesperson Catherine Howden said it is “a routine occurrence” for the agency to determine that provider network changes trigger a special enrollment period for their members. “It has happened many times in the past, though we have seen an uptick in recent years.”

Still, CMS would not identify plans whose members were allowed to disenroll after losing health providers. The agency also would not say whether the plans violated federal provider network rules intended to ensure that Medicare Advantage members have sufficient providers within certain distances and travel times.

The secrecy around when and how Advantage members can escape plans after their doctors and hospitals drop out worries Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees CMS.

“Seniors enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans deserve to know they can change their plan when their local doctor or hospital exits the plan due to profit-driven business practices,” Wyden said.

The increase in insurer-provider breakups isn’t surprising, given the growing popularity of Medicare Advantage. The plans attracted about 54% of the 61.2 million people who had both Medicare Parts A and B and were eligible to sign up for Medicare Advantage in 2024, according to KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

The plans can offer supplemental benefits unavailable from traditional Medicare because the federal government pays insurers about 20% more per member than traditional Medicare per-member costs, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, which advises Congress. The extra spending, which some lawmakers call wasteful, will total about $84 billion in 2025, MedPAC estimates. While traditional Medicare does not offer the additional benefits Advantage plans advertise, it does not limit beneficiaries’ choice of providers. They can go to any doctor or hospital that accepts Medicare, as nearly all do.

Sanford Health, the largest rural health system in the U.S., serving parts of seven states from South Dakota to Michigan, decided to leave a Humana Medicare Advantage plan last year that covered 15,000 of its patients. “It’s not so much about the finances or administrative burden, although those are real concerns,” said Nick Olson, Sanford Health’s chief financial officer. “The most important thing for us is the fact that coverage denials and prior authorization delays impact the care a patient receives, and that’s unacceptable.”

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, representing insurance regulators from every state, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia, has appealed to CMS to help Advantage members.

“State regulators in several states are seeing hospitals and crucial provider groups making decisions to no longer contract with any MA plans, which can leave enrollees without ready access to care,” the group wrote in September. “Lack of CMS guidance could result in unnecessary financial or medical injury to America’s seniors.”

The commissioners appealed again in March to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Significant network changes trigger important rights for beneficiaries, and they should receive clear notice of their rights and have access to counseling to help them make appropriate choices,” they wrote.

The insurance commissioners asked CMS to consider offering a special enrollment period for all Advantage members who lose the same major provider, instead of placing the burden on individuals to find help on their own. No matter what time of year, members would be able to change plans or enroll in government-run Medicare.

Advantage members granted this special enrollment period who choose traditional Medicare get a bonus: If they want to purchase a Medigap policy — supplemental insurance that helps cover Medicare’s considerable out-of-pocket costs — insurers can’t turn them away or charge them more because of preexisting health conditions.

Those potential extra costs have long been a deterrent for people who want to leave Medicare Advantage for traditional Medicare.

“People are being trapped in Medicare Advantage because they can’t get a Medigap plan,” said Bonnie Burns, a training and policy specialist at California Health Advocates, a nonprofit watchdog that helps seniors navigate Medicare.

Guaranteed access to Medigap coverage is especially important when providers drop out of all Advantage plans. Only four states— Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, and New York — offer that guarantee to anyone who wants to reenroll in Medicare.

But some hospital systems, including Great Plains Health in North Platte, Nebraska, are so frustrated by Advantage plans that they won’t participate in any of them.

It had the same problems with delays and denials of coverage as other providers, but one incident stands out for CEO Ivan Mitchell: A patient too sick to go home had to stay in the hospital an extra six weeks because her plan wouldn’t cover care in a rehabilitation facility.

With traditional Medicare the only option this year for Great Plains Health patients, Nebraska insurance commissioner Eric Dunning asked for a special enrollment period with guaranteed Medigap access for some 1,200 beneficiaries. After six months, CMS agreed.

Once Delaware’s insurance commissioner contacted CMS about the Bayhealth medical system dropping out of a Cigna Advantage plan, members received a special enrollment period starting in January.

Maine’s congressional delegation pushed for an enrollment period for nearly 4,000 patients of Northern Light Health after the 10-hospital system dropped out of a Humana Advantage plan last year.

“Our constituents have told us that they are anticipating serious challenges, ranging from worries about substantial changes to cost-sharing rates to concerns about maintaining care with current providers,” the delegation told CMS.

CMS granted the request to ensure “that MA enrollees have access to medically necessary care,” then-CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure wrote to Sen. Angus King, I-Maine.

Minnesota insurance officials appealed to CMS on behalf of some 75,000 members of Aetna, Humana, and UnitedHealthcare Advantage plans after six health systems announced last year they would leave the plans in 2025. So many provider changes caused “tremendous problems,” said Kelli Jo Greiner, director of the Minnesota State Health Insurance Assistance Program, known as a SHIP, at the Minnesota Board on Aging. SHIP counselors across the country provide Medicare beneficiaries free help choosing and using Medicare drug and Advantage plans.

Providers serving about 15,000 of Minnesota’s Advantage members ultimately agreed to stay in the insurers’ networks. CMS decided 14,000 Humana members qualified for a network-change special enrollment period.

The remaining 46,000 people — Aetna and UnitedHealthcare Advantage members — who lost access to four health systems were not eligible for the special enrollment period. CMS decided their plans still had enough other providers to care for them.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.