After a splashy premiere at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, John Travolta‘s directorial debut — Propeller One-Way Night Coach — was released on Apple TV on May 29. It’s an unusual movie, primarily because it barely qualifies as a feature. Propeller One-Way Night Coach comes in at a lean 61 minutes and unfolds largely during a cross-country flight to Los Angeles aboard a Lockheed plane in the 1960s. Travolta plays the supporting role of the plane’s pilot, while the child protagonist is played by Clark Shotwell. Propeller One-Way Night Coach took the number one spot on the global Apple TV rankings upon debut. However, its reign was short-lived.
According to FlixPatrol, the movie was overtaken within a week by Apple’s platform-defining blockbuster F1. The sports drama emerged as a massive theatrical hit in 2025, grossing nearly $635 million worldwide and securing four Oscar nominations, including in the Best Picture category. Starring Brad Pitt as a veteran race car driver who is summoned to save a faltering Formula One team, the movie received near-unanimous acclaim and set new benchmarks for how well streaming films could do in theaters.
Netflix seems to be taking a page out of Apple’s playbook with the upcoming The Adventures of Cliff Booth and Greta Gerwig‘s Narnia reboot. F1 currently holds a “Certified Fresh” 82% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus reads, “Driven by Brad Pitt’s laidback magnetism and sporting a souped-up engine courtesy of Joseph Kosinski’s kinetic direction, F1 The Movie brings vintage cool across the finish line.”
‘Propeller One-Way Night Coach’ Hasn’t Hit Cruising Altitude
The response to Propeller One-Way Night Coach, on the other hand, has been mixed. The movie currently holds a 55% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, although the audience score of 71% is slightly higher. Reviewing the film for Collider, Emma Kiely described it as “equal parts heinous and hysterical,” and wrote that “Travolta’s attempt at screenwriting and directing will go down as one of the most atrocious debuts ever committed to screen.” It’s only a matter of time before Apple’s other holdover hits — The Gorge, Greyhound, and Fountain of Youth — overtake Travolta’s film; they’re already gaining on it.
Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
- Release Date
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May 29, 2026
- Runtime
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61 Minutes
Cast
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Kelly B. Eviston
Jeff’s Mother






















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