It was August of 2015 when we first got wind that Apple was considering getting into the content creation biz by making its own TV shows. After recent reports about Senior VP Eddie Cue speaking with Hollywood brass about the venture, today we learned just what the company’s first effort will look like as well as who the company’s first star will be: Rapper, actor, and Beats mogul Dr. Dre.
With Dre in tow, Apple’s first original scripted series will be called Vital Signs, reports The Hollywood Reporter, citing unnamed sources.
It’s not a big surprise Apple would want to keep things in-house, so to speak, for its first attempt at TV land. Dre, a rapper, actor, and entrepreneur, became a member of the elite Apple team after the tech company purchased his and Jimmy Iovine’s Beats Electronics brand in 2014 for the kingly sum of $3 billion.
Dre (real name Andre Young) will reportedly both star in and executive produce Vital Signs, which will include six, half-hour episodes loosely based on his life. Interestingly, each episode is reportedly centered around a specific emotion, and how Dre deals with it.
The series has been dubbed by sources as a dark drama, so expect to see plenty of violence and sex; there’s even a supposed orgy scene in one of the episodes that was recently being filmed in LA. With a number of past transgressions in his life, including heavy drinking, violence, and even assault allegations against women, there’s certainly more than enough emotion and stories from Dre’s life that the show can mine.
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Dre is no stranger to on-screen successes: he most recently executive produced the breakout 2015 hit Straight Outta Compton, which grossed more than $200 million at the box office, and even spurred chatter about Academy Award nominations.
It’s a guarantee that the show will be made available through Apple Music, and it will likely be accessible through the iTunes platform as well. However, it’s unkown what role it will play in Apple’s much belabored plans for its own streaming video service, or whether the service will be shopped to other streaming services like Netflix or Amazon, or even traditional TV networks.
Vital Signs will reportedy be written and executive produced by Robert Munic, best known as the co-executive producer and writer of hit Fox show Empire. Paul Hunter, a veteran music video director, will head up the show, along with Aaron Ginsburg and William Green. Sam Rockwell (F is For Family, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) and Mo McCrae (Murder in the First) will also appear.
Will Vital Signs be just the first of many new shows to come? Chances are high that this is just the beginning. We’d expect nothing less than for Apple to make sure that Netflix and co. doesn’t reap all the rewards in the burgeoning streaming TV business.
