Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Audio / Video
  3. News

How can Apple’s The Morning Show possibly cost more than Game of Thrones?

Chris Gates
By

Apple is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on The Morning Show, the flagship series for its upcoming Apple TV+ streaming service. According to a report by The Financial Times, episodes of the drama cost more than $15 million each, making each one more expensive than an installment of Game of Thrones.

Where is all of that money going? The Morning Show is a Newsroom-esque drama about “the power dynamic between women and men” in the news media. It’s set in the real world. There are no dragons. No giants. No ice zombies. The Morning Show won’t feature large-scale battles that put big Hollywood blockbusters to shame. It won’t burn an entire fantasy kingdom to the ground.

Recommended Videos

But take a look at The Morning Show‘s cast list: Jennifer Aniston. Reese Witherspoon. Steve Carell. It also features well-known character actors like Billy Crudup, Néstor Carbonell, Mark Duplass, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

Suddenly, it all starts to make sense.

Related

Game of Thrones launched with a handful of known actors, most notably Sean Bean (who appeared for less than a season), Peter Dinklage, and Lena Headey, but they were hardly A-list stars. Other actors, including Emilia Clarke and Kit Harrington, were virtually unknown. They didn’t make Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones made them.

By contrast, Apple is banking on name recognition to drive Apple TV+ subscriptions. Celebrities, not content, were the thrust of Apple’s March 2019 “Showtime” event, during which the tech giant unveiled Apple TV+ to the masses. The message since then been consistent: Want to see what the most famous people in show business are up to? Subscribe to Apple TV+.

The list of shows and movies coming to Apple TV+ backs this idea up. Apple has enlisted Steven Spielberg, J.J. Abrams, Oprah Winfrey, M. Night Shyamalan, Sofia Coppola, Bill Murray, Jason Momoa, and more to create content for the new streaming network. The projects themselves are little more than loglines, but no matter what these shows are about, Apple wants you know who’s involved.

Overall, The Financial Times says that Apple is spending $6 billion on original Apple TV+ content, a massive increase from its initial $1 billion investment. It’s easy to see why: Big names come at a big cost, and Apple is willing to pay.

Apple isn’t the only company pouring big bucks into streaming content, of course. Netflix spends $15 billion a year producing original programming, and has handed out six-figure development deals to people like Ryan Murphy, Shonda Rhimes, and Game of Thrones‘ own David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Amazon is spending $1 billion on its Lord of the Rings prequel alone.

Still, there’s a difference. Murphy, Rhimes, Benioff, and Weiss are creators first and celebrities second. Casual TV viewers probably may not even know who those people are, even though they’ve certainly heard of Grey’s Anatomy, American Horror Story, and Game of Thrones. Tolkien’s Middle-earth is known for its stories, not its red carpet appearances.

Netflix and its ilk are paying for content. Apple TV+ is banking on star power. It’s too early to say if Apple’s strategy will work, but in an increasingly crowded streaming service market, it’s hard to fault a company for doing anything it can to stand apart. Keep an eye on Apple TV+. Apple just might be onto something.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Chris Gates
Chris Gates
Contributor
Christopher Gates lives in Los Angeles, CA and writes about movies, TV, video games, and other pop culture curiosities. In…
Has Apple TV+ become the new home of Prestige TV?
Callum Turner and Austin Butler stand near a plane in Masters of the Air.

Masters of the Air is the third and final installment in the trilogy of World War II TV dramas that Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg have been producing for well over 20 years now. Their efforts began with 2001’s Band of Brothers and continued with 2010’s The Pacific, both of which took home the Emmy for Outstanding Miniseries in their respective years. Both aired on HBO, which was seen at the time as the only place where expensive, truly prestige miniseries like them could be made. A lot’s changed since then.

Case in point: Masters of the Air isn’t an HBO production. The miniseries, which follows the members of the real-life 100th Bomb Group and their bombing efforts in Nazi-controlled regions of WWII-era Europe, premiered last week on Apple TV+. It isn’t any less expensive or star-studded than Band of Brothers and The Pacific. On the contrary, one could argue that it’s an even bigger series than either of those two dramas. Why, then, was Spielberg and Hanks’ most ambitious WWII miniseries to date made for Apple TV+ rather than HBO, the home of its two sister shows?

Read more
Like Apple TV+’s hit WWII drama Masters of the Air? Then watch these 3 great shows right now
Rami Malek and Joseph Mazzello point guns and cover in The Pacific.

The end of January marks the premiere of one of the most anticipated TV shows of the year, Masters of the Air. The Apple TV+ war series follows the 100th Bomb Group, a group of courageous pilots in the Air Force who came to be known as the "Bloody Hundredth" during World War II. The series features an ensemble cast of rising stars, including Austin Butler, Callum Turner, and Barry Keoghan.

If it connects with critics and fans, Masters of the Air could become one of the next great television shows. If you're looking for more war shows, the three series listed below should be next on your must-watch lists. Two shows are companion pieces to Masters of the Air, while the third is based on a famous satirical novel from the 1960s.
Band of Brothers (2001)

Read more
How much is Apple Music, and how can you get it for free?
Apple Music with lossless audio music track playing on OnePlus 11 along with the OnePlus Buds Pro 2 in black color on top of a green cloth surface.

If you're in the market for a music streaming service, you can't really go wrong with Apple Music. With a catalog of more than 100 million songs, all in high-quality lossless audio at no additional cost, Apple's been a contender in this space for nearly as long as music streaming has been a thing.

Here's how much each Apple Music plan costs:

Read more