Apple TV+ can’t seem to solve its movie problem

Apple TV+ launched almost five years ago. In that time, the service has debuted a lot of great TV shows. Some have even become mainstream hits. But Apple’s relationship with movies has been more…complicated. The company has moved from one film strategy to another, with mixed success. And most recently, critical and box office failures have plagued Apple.

Here’s why the Apple TV+ movie strategy is more confusing than ever.

How it started: Oscar bait and critical acclaim

In line with the Apple TV+ goal of making prestige content, Apple found a lot of success with its early film strategy.

2021 film CODA set a high bar when it won the top prize for films in the US: the Academy Award for Best Picture.

This achievement was especially impressive because no other streamer had ever won Best Picture—not even Netflix, with its much bigger head start.

Other film highlights from Apple’s first few years included The Tragedy of Macbeth, Wolfwalkers, On the Rocks, Cha Cha Real Smooth, and Greyhound.

Largely the company focused on critical acclaim and awards. Box office revenue didn’t matter much, as long as the films were good.

For the most part, this strategy worked.

But in 2023, things started to change, as Apple set its eye on mainstream productions.

How it’s going: Mainstream bombs

Dating back to 2023 and into this year, these are Apple’s most noteworthy films that have been released. It’s not a comprehensive list, but these are the titles Apple has thrown serious marketing weight behind:

• Ghosted
• Tetris
• The Family Plan
• The Beanie Bubble
• Napoleon
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Argylle
• Fly Me to the Moon
• and soon, The Instigators

In a clear shift, most of Apple’s movies these days target mainstream crowds. Some are still award contenders—namely Killers and Napoleon—but most are simply crowd pleasers.

Out of those crowd pleasers, Apple has struggled to achieve anything approaching success…with a caveat.

Argylle was hated by critics, and became a huge box office disaster. What Apple hoped would be its first film franchise turned out to be its biggest bomb to date.

More recently, Fly Me to the Moon fared better with critics, but its box office run has nonetheless disappointed.

Several high profile films have received no theatrical release, or only a very limited run by Apple.

Ghosted, The Family Plan, The Beanie Bubble, and Tetris fall into this category. Out of the four, only Tetris received decent reviews. The rest were critically panned, and Apple’s latest release, The Instigators, looks set to continue the trend.

Yesterday, Apple shared the confusing news that: a) it was canceling the wide theatrical release for the upcoming Wolfs, while b) simultaneously ordering a sequel to the film.

So Apple started out making films that critics loved, and that won awards, but that audiences may not have cared for and didn’t earn much money.

Then it pivoted to producing movies with mass market appeal. There are still Oscar contenders thrown in, but most high-profile TV+ movies are now failing with critics and at the box office.

What’s coming up: The biggest test yet

Reports have indicated that Apple’s theatrical strategy is very much in flux. The company’s scattershot approach to theatrical clearly demonstrates that, and Wolfs’ last-minute change provides further evidence.

However, there’s one big release in the works that will be the biggest test yet for Apple’s strategy: F1.

F1 is the Brad Pitt-starring film from the director of Top Gun: Maverick. It’s set for a wide theatrical release next summer, and Apple has reportedly poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the project.

F1 carries the highest stakes yet for Apple’s new film strategy. As the company’s first attempt at a summer blockbuster, F1 needs box office success—ideally fueled by critical acclaim—to validate the current mainstream approach.

If it’s another failure at the box office, there’s likely to be a reckoning among TV+ leadership.

The caveat: Apple TV+ success

Earlier I alluded to an important caveat when measuring Apple’s mainstream-focused strategy.

The caveat is this: we have no idea how movies factor into Apple TV+ viewership or subscription numbers.

As I write this, a quick glance at the top 5 charting films on TV+ reveals that most are the critically-panned movies I mentioned before.

The Family Plan is #1, followed by Ghosted at #2, and Argylle is the fourth most-watched film.

Apple doesn’t release actual numbers, so we don’t know how many people are really watching these titles. But compared to other TV+ movies, at least, they seem to be doing pretty well.

What does that mean? It means that Apple’s TV strategy is messy, but it’s not altogether failing.

Even if critics don’t like Apple’s new mainstream-targeted films, and even if the box office isn’t proving friendly to those titles, viewers on Apple TV+ seem to have found value in them.

And isn’t that, ultimately, what Apple wants? Maybe. I’m just not convinced the company even knows what it wants.

Have you enjoyed Apple’s movies? What do you think of its changing strategy? Let us know in the comments.