The Wall Street Journal: Apple Invests $1 Billion in TV Series

According to The Wall Street Journal, which relies on insiders, Apple is allocating a billion dollars for the purchase and production of its own TV series. The iPhone maker would therefore like to compete with Netflix and Amazon.

According to sources of the American newspaper, the amount is intended to make its own TV series in the coming year and to purchase rights for broadcasting series. It would be enough to be able to offer up to ten different series. The budget is in the hands of Jamie Erlicht and Zack van Amburg, who were appointed as Heads of Programming by Apple in June. The two Hollywood veterans were until recently employed by Sony.

The WSJ states that the amount is about half of what HBO spent last year and is comparable to what Amazon spent on productions in 2013. That was Amazon’s second year in which it made its own series. Netflix has an even larger budget for its own productions. At the end of last year, the streaming service announced that it would spend six billion dollars this year on making its own series and films.

Apple has been working on its own productions for some time now. In June it put the first episode of its own series Planet of the Apps online. At the beginning of August, the first episode of Carpool Karaoke, also an Apple production, appeared. These two series are now offered through Apple Music. It is not yet known whether the upcoming series will also be offered via the music streaming service or whether they will have their own place.