The Trillion-dollar company Apple, is expected to unveil its Netflix-live video service on the 25th of March 2019 at its Cupertino, California Campus. It will also be unveiling its news subscription service on the same day.
For more than a year, the company (Apple) has been deploying budget of 1 billion dollars (1 trillion Kenyan shillings), on plans to recruit projects from very high profile film and television brands. So far Apple has content involving big names like Reese Witherspoon, M. Night Shyamalan, Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, among very many others. It has also hired two of the world’s top television executives; Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg who are former co-presidents at Sony Pictures Televisions, to spearhead the effort.
Shows on the streaming service will include comedy, drama, documentary and even undefined deals with names like Oprah.
On the film side, Apple has a partnership with film studio A24 for the production of original movies. That partnership will include a movie called ‘On The Rocks’ starring Bill Murray and Rashida Jones. It will be directed by Sofia Coppola. A24 is known for movies like Ex Machina, Moonlight and Room.
But Apple’s upcoming streaming service, is already coming under heavy scrutiny. According to cnet.com, there are reports claiming that Apple micromanages every aspect of upcoming shows and is restricting its creators, stopping them from making edgy content. This is because part of the company’s aim, is to keep all of its programming family friendly. While family friendly shows are not a liability at all (I mean Disney some of the biggest movie franchises on that), edgy television shows have given other streaming services recognition at award ceremonies. Recognition which is often times used as a means to measure just how successful a service is, when it comes to producing top quality shows. Apple’s approach could potentially, affect it negatively.
One interesting aspect is the fact that Apple’s forthcoming service will be launching at a time when it seems like every major media brand is putting out their own streaming platform. From the DC Universe’s Comic inspired television shows, to Disney’s Disney+ (which will cost substantially less than Netflix according to CEO Bob Iger), a digital service that will be a home base for streaming all of Disney’s blockbuster movies, multiple Star Wars original series, as well as other programming. NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia (owners of HBO), are both also creating their own streaming services, according to cnet.com. Facebook is also pouring money into original video content for the Watch section of its platform.
Side note – If you are planning to cop subscriptions to all the above mentioned services, starting saving!
It is rumoured that Apple provide free access to the shows on its streaming platform, to users with Apple devices. This is according to Rich Greenfield, an analyst for BTIG. Rich claims that Apple hopes viewers will come for Oprah or Spielberg and then plug into other paid services so as to watch Starz, HBO or Showtime, as Apple takes a cut of a service’s subscription revenue when a user signs up through one of its storefronts.
But Apple with its usually very high priced products, giving away 1$ billion (1 trillion Kenyan shillings) worth of content for free, sounds too good to be true.
I guess we will know more on the 25th of March 2019.
