Brad Pitt has shared the real reason why he and Tom Cruise ultimately didn’t star in the 2019 hit film Ford v Ferrari. In a recent interview with The National News, Pitt explained that creative differences over their characters’ roles led Cruise to exit the project.
Pitt revealed that he and Cruise were originally attached to the racing film over a decade before it was made, with director Joseph Kosinski initially on board. “Tom and I, for a while there, were on Ford v Ferrari with Joe [Kosinski],” Pitt said. “This was about 10 years before the guys who actually made it — and made it a great movie.”
The sticking point, according to Pitt, was about who would get behind the wheel. “We both wanted to drive,” he explained. “He wanted to play Carroll Shelby, and I wanted to play Ken Miles. And when Tom realized that Carroll Shelby would not be driving much in the movie, it didn’t come through.”
The film eventually moved forward with Christian Bale as racer Ken Miles and Matt Damon as designer Carroll Shelby, directed by James Mangold. It became a critical and commercial success, earning four Academy Award nominations and winning two.
Kosinski, who is now making headlines for directing Apple’s F1 movie starring Pitt, previously noted in an interview that studio concerns over budget also stalled the earlier version of Ford v Ferrari.
Pitt’s new film F1, released on June 27, has already been a box office success and sparked talk of a potential sequel. In it, Pitt plays fictional driver Sonny Hayes, a retired racer attempting a comeback. He stars alongside Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem, and others. The film was made in collaboration with Formula 1 and its teams.
As for the possibility of reuniting with Cruise in the future — perhaps even in connection to Cruise’s long-rumored Days of Thunder sequel — Pitt was open but made his limits clear.
“Well, I’m not gonna hang my ass off airplanes and sh– like that,” he joked, referencing Cruise’s famous stunts. “So when he does something again that’s on the ground.”
