Its acquisition of the Tom Hanks-led WW2 submarine action thriller “Greyhound” is just the start of Apple’s ambitious plans to beef up its TV+ streaming service.
Bloomberg reports that the tech giant’s video-programming executives have taken pitches from Hollywood studios about licensing older content for TV+ and have bought some shows and movies.
The marks a shift for the service which launched in November to a relatively tepid response with a lineup of a handful of costly original programs which received decent but not great reviews. While 10 million people had signed up for TV+ by February, only half the number are actively using the service.
Now it’s building out a back catalog of content that can better stack up against large libraries available on rivals like Netflix, Disney+ and next week’s launch of HBO Max which all offer thousands of titles as opposed to Apple’s less than three dozen.
For now, they reportedly haven’t yet acquired any large franchises or blockbusters. One big acquisition deal that has just gone down though is for an untitled four-part documentary series from acclaimed filmmakers Brian Lazarte and James Lee Hernandez (“McMillions”). That series will deal with the “unbelievable true story of one of the largest scams in government history”.
