F1 Green Flags Apple TV+ Rebrand

The long overdue Apple TV+ premiere of the movie F1 The Movie coincides with a rebranding of the streaming service.

F1 debuts December 12 but Apple TV+ used its announcement of this also to reveal it’s dropping the ‘plus’ to become just Apple TV — the same name as its media streaming box and app.

F1 is Apple’s biggest movie hit, hence the Brad Pitt vehicle taking so long — 168 days — to transition from the big screen to Apple’s subscription service (it’s also been huge on transactional digital sites like Apple TV and Prime Video). According to Apple:

Since its wide theatrical release on 27 June, 2025, F1 The Movie has broken records, debuting at #1 and crossing US$629 million at the global box office. In addition to being the highest grossing sports film, F1 The Movie is this year’s highest grossing original feature, and the biggest opening for an original live action film in the US in the last five years, as well as Brad Pitt’s highest grossing feature to date. The film boasts an A CinemaScore, along with a soaring 97% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and continues to fuel wide acclaim as the most authentic racing feature ever made.

Here’s the blurb:

Dubbed “the greatest that never was,” Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) was Formula 1’s most promising phenom of the 1990s until an accident on the track nearly ended his career. Thirty years later, he’s a nomadic racer-for-hire when he’s approached by his former teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), owner of a struggling Formula 1 team that is on the verge of collapse. Ruben convinces Sonny to come back to Formula 1 for one last shot at saving the team and being the best in the world. He’ll drive alongside Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), the team’s hotshot rookie intent on setting his own pace. But as the engines roar, Sonny’s past catches up with him and he finds that in Formula 1, your teammate is your fiercest competition — and the road to redemption is not something you can travel alone.

View the trailer here.

In other Apple TV news:

➢ Pluribus, a new nine-part sci-fi drama from writer/director Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul), starring Rhea Seehorn, bows with its first two episodes on November 7. Already renewed for a second season, it’s billed as “a genre-bending original in which the most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness” (view trailer here).

➢ S2 of Drops of God, the French-Japanese drama set in the world of gastronomy and fine wines, streams from January 21, when Camille and Issei are thrust into their most perilous challenge yet: to uncover the origin of the world’s greatest wine, a mystery so profound that even their legendary father, Alexandre Léger, could not solve it.

➢ Lavish period drama The Buccaneers has been renewed for a third and final season.