By Apple looks to be potentially pulling back on its lavish spending on film and TV product for its Apple TV+ service in the near future, according to an extensive new report at Bloomberg.
Speaking with business partners and employees, both current and former, the outlet indicates Apple services boss Eddy Cue has been having regular meetings with Apple TV+ chiefs Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht to discuss project budgets.
The aim is for the latter pair to exert more control over spending on projects, with Van Amburg and Erlicht reportedly wanting to change their reputation as “the biggest spender in town”.
Apple has spent more than $20 billion to produce original TV shows and movies for its service so far, the result has been numerous critically acclaimed and awards nominated works.
In fact, the Apple TV+ service has earned a strong reputation for quality over quantity with series like “Ted Lasso,” “Slow Horses,” “Silo,” “For All Mankind,” “Severance,” “The Morning Show,” “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” “Pachinko,” “Hijack,” “Dickinson,” “Black Bird,” “The Afterparty,” “Mythic Quest” and more.
The company is also known for splurging on individual titles such as the well over $500 million combined spend on recent Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott and Matthew Vaughn films and the $250 million spent on the “Masters of the Air” mini-series. Strike-related delays have also reportedly seen the upcoming second season of “Severance” coming in at a cost of more than $20 million an episode.
However the sizable audience just hasn’t been there. The trio of aforementioned films were all considered disappointments at the box office, and only the Scorsese film barely twitched the needle on the Nielsen rankings when it made it to the service.
People have long said poor box office doesn’t matter because it’s Apple who have huge resources and different metrics for success. Even so, the piece indicates subscriber growth has been weak and if the films aren’t driving subscriptions or making money – Apple could be understandably stingier in investing in such films.
Similarly, despite numerous TV launches this year, ‘Masters’ is the only new Apple show to appear in Nielsen’s rankings, and even it reportedly had a smaller U.S. audience than the Japanese-language Netflix series “House of Ninjas”. The outlet adds the service generates less viewing in one month than Netflix does in one day.
In the past few years, only four series from the service have made Nielsen’s weekly list of the ten most-popular original streaming shows. However, Apple employees have pushed back on the Nielsen figures saying they are inaccurate and incomplete (and only measure U.S. viewers on select devices). If Netflix is excluded, Apple’s share is said to be quite close to its peers.
All studios and streaming services across Hollywood are cutting back after years of record spending and losses to try and make streaming more sustainable, so Apple doing the same isn’t unexpected.
This has reportedly resulted in fewer projects being ordered straight to series at Apple TV+ and potential delays to production on existing shows to ensure they don’t go over budget.
Source Bloomberg
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