Apple continues to add to its collection of movies and TV shows, with the latest acquisition a documentary about Ed Sheeran called Songwriter.
At this point, Apple is paying for a dozen TV shows to be produced, though the company hasn’t said what it’s going to do with them.
Songwriter follows Ed Sheeran as he writes and performs his music. It was directed by Murray Cummings, his cousin. The documentary debuted at the Berlin Film Festival, and played tonight at the Tribeca Film Festival.
The cost of the deal is described as “low to mid-seven figures” by Deadline, so somewhere under $5 million. Apple has global rights to the flick.
Apple TV just the start of Apple and TV
Apple is reportedly planning to invest over $1 billion into original TV content.
Among the shows the company is spending all that cash on include an Amazing Stories reboot from Steven Spielberg, a comedy starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, a sci-fi drama from the show runner of Outlander, a program based on the life of NBA star Kevin Durant, and a series about a Serial-style crime podcast that reopens a murder case. Apple also recently signed on for a second season of James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke.
All this despite the fact that the company hasn’t revealed how it’s going to distribute this content. Perhaps the biggest possibility is a for-pay streaming Apple TV service that would compete with Netflix. Or it could just buy Netflix.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
