Hulu, Netflix, HBO, Disney, Amazon, and now Apple. Already so many choices but Apple has a ton of leverage moving into the video content sector. $5 billion has been committed to compete but recently the number has jumped to $6 billion as more shows have moved through production and budgets have ballooned.
One production alone starring Jennifer Aniston, Reece Witherspoon and Steve Carrell called The Morning Show has cost Apple hundreds of millions of dollars while spending $300 million on just the first two seasons alone. That makes it the most expensive on a per episode basis, beating out the final season of Game of Thrones, which enjoyed a budget of roughly $15 million per episode and was ranked as the most expensive season of television ever.
Apple is moving very intensely and at such an aggressive rate that they have already matched what Netflix was spending annually on original content just a couple years ago. The difference will be in the content provided which will be released at a much slower pace with a prioritization on quality over quantity. The competition is real though as Netflix is expected to spend more than $14 billion this year on original content while Disney is expected to spend close to $24 billion this year.
Nobody knows much about Apple’s TV Plus but it’s expected to launch sometime in the next two months. Apple has already built up an office in Culver City in Los Angeles to manage this platform. Bloomberg reports that Apple may price the service at $9.99 a month and launch it in November.