Flagship Productions: Ted Lasso, Killers of the Flower Moon, CODA, Severance, The Morning Show. Apple is the "prestige boutique" of entertainment studios. Unlike Netflix, which prioritizes volume, Apple curates. CODA became the first film from a streaming service to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon (budget: $200M) was a theatrical event. Apple doesn't need to be the biggest studio; it needs to be the one hosting the after-parties at the Oscars. Their productions are characterized by high-budget, high-talent, and high-emotional stakes.
You can produce the best show of the year, but if no one finds it, it fails. Popular studios now spend 30% of their budget on discovery engineering.
Checklist for your release plan:
Flagship Productions: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Reacher, The Boys, Fallout, Road House (2024). Amazon’s $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM was a declaration of war. While The Rings of Power received mixed critical reviews, it drove massive Prime sign-ups, making it a successful "loss leader." However, Amazon’s true genius lies in niche hits. Reacher (a muscular action-drama) and Fallout (a video game adaptation) have become word-of-mouth juggernauts. Furthermore, Amazon is the only major studio that allows simultaneous theatrical releases, having released Air and Saltburn in cinemas before streaming.