Brad Pitt to Star as a Sky-Walking Ironworker in Apple's 1970s Drama 'Connector'
(Illustration: USA Current Affaires)
Brad Pitt is heading back to the top of the world — quite literally. The Oscar winner is set to star in Connector, a new Apple Original Films drama that will see him play a fearless ironworker walking the high steel of 1970s New York, hundreds of feet above the streets below.
Deadline first broke the news on November 12, and Apple confirmed the project the following day. The film will be directed by Darius Marder, the filmmaker behind the acclaimed drama Sound of Metal, and it marks Pitt's return to Apple after the huge success of his racing blockbuster F1.
It is a striking change of pace for Pitt. After playing a veteran Formula 1 driver at 200 miles per hour, he will now play a man whose workplace is a narrow steel beam in the open sky — a working-class hero whose courage is quieter, but no less dangerous. For Marder, it is a long-awaited return to feature directing, and for Apple, it is another major swing with one of the biggest movie stars on the planet.
A Sky-Walking Ironworker in 1970s New York
Connector is set in 1970s New York and centres on a working-class legend: a sky-walking ironworker who takes on forces larger than himself. That is the official description from Apple TV, and it is deliberately short on detail — no character name, no supporting cast and no further plot points have been revealed yet.
What is clear is the world the film will inhabit. The 1970s were the years when New York's skyline was being transformed, with towers rising across Manhattan and the ironworkers who built them working with little more than nerve, balance and each other. These were the men who assembled skyscrapers by hand, walking steel beams in the open air — a trade with a rich real-world history, from the famous lunch-atop-a-skyscraper photographs of the 1930s to the Mohawk ironworker crews who raised the World Trade Center.
Marder co-wrote the screenplay with his sister, Nina Marder, based on an original story by Derek Cianfrance, the director of Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines. It is a team built for grounded, character-driven drama, and the premise suggests a film that will be as much about the man as about the height — a working man pushed up against powers far bigger than himself.
Marder's Long-Awaited Return Behind the Camera
For Darius Marder, Connector is his first feature film as a director since Sound of Metal, his debut narrative feature. That film, starring Riz Ahmed as a drummer losing his hearing, earned six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, and won the Oscars for Best Sound and Best Film Editing.
Six years is a long time to wait for a follow-up, and Marder has spent it carefully. Connector is the project he has chosen to come back with, and the pairing with Pitt gives it instant weight. According to Deadline, Pitt and Marder had been discussing the project for some time, and after reading the latest draft of the script, Pitt was keen to make it his next film — reportedly the first thing he shoots in 2027, although no official production start date has been announced.
Pitt will also produce the film through his Plan B banner, alongside Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, with Marder also producing. Apple Studios will serve as the studio. It is a reunion in more ways than one: Pitt and Plan B previously worked with Apple on F1 and Wolfs, and Connector continues a run that has made Apple one of the most ambitious studios in Hollywood.
What Happens Next
For now, the film is in development, and the details fans most want — who else is in the cast, when cameras roll and when it will reach screens — are still to come. What is already clear is the shape of the thing: a 1970s New York epic, a director returning after an Oscar-winning debut, and a movie star taking on one of the most physically daring roles of his career.
Pitt has had a busy run, with F1 and Heart of the Beast among his recent credits and The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth still to come. Connector adds something very different to that list — a period drama about ordinary work done at extraordinary heights. Johnny Depp is also mounting a major Hollywood comeback of his own, and Tom Holland's Spider-Man is getting an awards-season push — but few upcoming films sound quite as distinctive as this one.
Would you watch Brad Pitt as a 1970s ironworker walking the high steel? Let us know in the comments.
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