Apple might make a Mariah Carey Christmas special a regular part of the Apple TV+ holiday slate. A new report suggests Apple and the superstar songstress are already in talks about a 2021 follow-up to the surprisingly popular Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special.
Netflix could spend an estimated $19.03 billion on video content in 2021, data presented by investment bank Bankr suggests.
That would be an increase of 10% from the estimated $17.3 billion it spent this year. It’s also a massive ramp-up from the $2.4 billion Netflix spent in 2013 when it started moving into original productions with shows like House of Cards.
Say goodbye to 2020 with the help of Snoopy and his friends. Apple TV+ is now showing Happy New Year, Charlie Brown.
It’s one of many holiday specials appearing on Apple’s streaming video service, which is now the home of all things Peanuts.
Among other things, Apple is known for its clear messaging and high level of quality control. Which is why it was slightly strange when a poster for upcoming Apple TV+ movie Cherry failed totally on both these counts. It featured an all-but-illegible title on its “For Your Consideration” campaign poster for Best Picture.
Don’t worry, though. The flick hasn’t been renamed CHERk, 0HER88 or 8HERK in post-production. Nor is this terrible typeface a marketing stunt. Instead, it seems that trade publication Variety just shared the wrong version of the poster.
A new report adds weight to rumors that an Apple TV set-top box supercharged for gaming is coming next year.
“Apple is planning an upgraded box with a stronger gaming focus, an updated remote and a new processor,” according to Bloomberg.
MGM, the movie studio that owns the James Bond franchise, is supposedly up for sale — and The Wall Street Journal says some “big technology companies [are] logical buyers.”
Apple has previously been reported as expressing interest in acquiring the James Bond movies, and has held talks about purchasing MGM.
Coronavirus cases continue to spike around the U.S. and the world — and the set of Apple TV+ shows is no exception. With several positive COVID-19 tests having been reported on the set of Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, the show creator and one of its lead actors Rob McElhenney sent out a message to staff, Variety reports.
But not everyone was happy about it.
Superstar Samuel L. Jackson will take the lead in The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, a limited series coming to Apple TV+. The show is being adapted from a novel about a dying man getting a revival of his youth.
Earlier in 2020, Jackson appeared in The Banker, the first movie on Apple TV+.
The next star-powered movie on Apple TV+ will put Justin Timberlake in the spotlight. He’ll star in Palmer as a former prisoner determined to put his life back together. The film will debut on Apple’s streaming service in late January.
Watch a trailer now:
Oscar winner Jared Leto could play Adam Neumann, boss of WeWork, in an Apple TV+ series about the rise and fall of the shared workspace startup.
At one point in time, WeWork had an estimated value of $47 billion, before it collapsed. Neumann served as WeWork’s CEO from 2010 through 2019, before finally being pressured into resigning. A Wall Street Journal article last year cited his “eccentric behavior” as one of the reasons he was pushed to step down.
Apple TV+ executives are reportedly in “prolonged conversations” to acquire two movies produced by former Pixar and Walt Disney chief creative officer John Lasseter.
The movies could be part of a larger agreement between Apple and the company Skydance Animation, which Lasseter heads up. Lasseter is one of the most successful creators in animation history. He played a key role in creating the Toy Story franchise, The Incredibles movies, Finding Dory, Frozen and more.
Users of the Chromecast with Google TV will soon be able to install the Apple TV app. That’ll bring access to Apple’s streaming video service, along with series like Ted Lasso and movies like Wolfwalkers.
This is part of Apple’s efforts to get its video app on as many platforms as possible. Going beyond iPhone Mac, the video software is already on multiple smart TVs, game consoles and more.
Apple has released the first trailer for its upcoming Billie Eilish documentary, The World’s A Little Blurry.
The documentary, which Apple reportedly paid $25 million to acquire, will debut on Apple TV+ February 26. The trailer depicts Eilish in her regular home life, on stage, and also shows off home video of the pop star as a kid. Check it out below.
The psychological thriller Servant will be back for a third season. Apple TV+ went ahead and greenlit the next season event though it’s still a month before Season 2 premiers.
The show tells the story of young couple trying to figure out if their lost child has returned from the dead. Of if they’re going mad. Or something worse is happening. It’s what you’d expect from a series with M. Night Shyamalan involved.
The iPhone 12 is seemingly shaping up to be a massive winner for Apple, with a Tuesday report claiming that Apple is set to produce between 20% and 30% more handsets than it did last year.
The report says that Apple has plans to produce up to 230 million iPhones in 2021. While that also includes older handsets like the iPhone 11 and SE, it is primarily driven by “demand for [Apple’s] first-ever 5G” phones, according to Nikkei.
The Apple TV app tries to do too much. It tries to be too much. And this lack of focus damages the Apple TV+ streaming service. Still, a design change in iOS 14.3 and the iPad equivalent makes it just a little bit easier for subscribers to find Apple TV+ shows and movies.
The small tweak doesn’t go far enough, though. It’s only a tiny step in the right direction. What’s truly needed is a dedicated Apple TV+ app.
Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly stepped in to squash an Apple TV+ series that would have chronicled the rise of controversial blogging network Gawker Media.
Earlier this year, Vanity Fair reported that Apple TV+ execs were working with former Gawker writers Max Read and Cord Jefferson, among others, on the series. Not much in the way of details were published. However, it sounds like it could have been a scripted show about the “glory days” of a blog known for “skewering the powerful.”
One of the potential problems? Apple and Cook could have been among the powerful in question.
Wolfwalkers, the animated movie that arrives on Apple TV+ today, is the best animated film of 2020. A fiery mix of folklore and feminism, it’s one of the most astonishing works of visual art you’re likely to see this year.
It comes from the makers of gorgeous animated features The Secret of Kells and The Breadwinner — and it marks their strongest work to date.
Julia Roberts is the latest star putting in an appearance on Apple TV+. She’ll reportedly take the lead in an adaptation of the mystery-thriller The Last Thing He Told Me.
Update November 12, 2021: Jennifer Garner has replaced Julia Roberts as the lead in this upcoming series.
Apple has secured the rights to a new scripted anthology series about climate change called Extrapolations.
According to trade publication Variety, the series will reveal the “intimate, unanticipated stories of how the upcoming changes to our planet will affect love, faith, work and family on a personal and human scale.”
The series is created by Scott Z. Burns, a screenwriter, producer and director who wrote The Bourne Ultimatum and Contagion. He also produced the Academy Award-winning climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth.
Apple could have to ensure that 30 percent of Apple TV+ content is produced in Europe in order to sell in that market, suggests new potential regulation in the works.
Under the General Scheme of the Online Safety and Media Regulation Bill, which has not yet been passed, all streaming platforms would have to abide by these rules.
Apple TV+ snapped up the rights to Blake Crouch’s excellent quantum-tinged parallel universe thriller Dark Matter. Crouch, whose Wayward Pines novels were turned into a sci-fi show of the same name, will adapt his 2016 novel for screen.
The New York Times bestseller Dark Matter follows the story of Jason Dessen, a family man and high-school physics teacher. Walking home one night, Dessen is abducted by a masked stranger and injected with a drug. When he wakes up, he finds that he’s living in a world in which he’s unmarried and has achieved astonishing professional success.
Apple TV+ is clearly confident about For All Mankind. The alternate-history sci-fi series got a green light for a third season on Tuesday. And that’s months before the second season debuts on Apple’s streaming video service.
The show depicts a different version of the space race — one that begins with the USSR beating the US to the Earth’s moon.
A faster version of the Apple TV set top box apparently isn’t going to unveiled Tuesday morning, despite significant speculation.
Apple is reportedly going to launch something on December 8, and earlier today a noted leaker seemed to hint about it being new Apple TV hardware. But that’s now been retracted, and other sources have stated that whatever gets announced tomorrow, it won‘t be an Apple TV.
UPDATE: Apple took the wraps off AirPods Max headphones and Apple Fitness+ on December 8.
Season two of Tehran, the excellent spy drama whose first season just wrapped up on Apple TV+, is underway — although Apple has yet to give it the official go-ahead.
“I can say that we are working on the second season,” said Julien Leroux, CEO and founder of production company Paper Entertainment. “It’s not been officially greenlit, but we are working on it, so hopefully we’ll have some good news by the end of the year.”
