The Shows Apple TV+ Wants to Buy Now
My Summer Sellers' Guide starts with the streamer still serving big checks (but not for everything and not for everyone)
I write about TV from L.A. I interviewed a top agent-turned-manager about his take on the TV market, reported on the boom in microdramas and wrote about how L.A. sound stages are scrambling as production dwindles. Reach me at elaine@theankler.com. As a paid subscriber to Series Business, you’ll receive dispatches from Elaine, Lesley Goldberg and Manori Ravindran on the TV business. This is a standalone subscription separate from The Ankler. For access to Series Business and everything The Ankler publishes, including Sean McNulty’s The Wakeup and Richard Rushfield, subscribe here.
Greetings, readers. Thank you for all the wonderfully heartfelt responses to my newsletter last week on the impact of the ICE raids on the Hollywood community’s immigrant population. Sharing a bit of my own backstory as a formerly undocumented immigrant was anxiety-inducing, but hearing from you, lovely readers, made it all far less so. We’ve taken the paywall off that column on the Ankler and here on Series Business, so please share it with anyone you know who has a stake in this issue — which is all of us.
Yesterday I brought you the exclusive news that will mean a little help for those directly affected: Bridesmaids and Another Simple Favor director Paul Feig is donating $100,000 to the National Immigration Law Center. “What’s more American than trying to make it in America?” Feig’s statement about the donation read, in part. “Instead of stoking fear and resentment, our country’s leaders should pursue immigration policies based on a fundamental truth: immigrants make us stronger.”
Hear, hear. An important message ahead of the Fourth of July. Speaking of which, the upcoming holiday might have a lucky few of you out of the office already this week — but remember, in the streaming age, development never sleeps.
So while you’re lounging poolside in Puglia or watching fireworks at the pier, take a moment to read my Series Business Summer Sellers’ Guide, in which I talk to agents and producers about what they understand the major networks and streaming platforms are looking for in a show today.
And before you say it — I know, I know, it feels like what the programmers want changes every week. You guys tell me that all the time. But there are some recurring themes to note, and my semiannual conversations with insiders always offer valuable insight into how often writers are going out on pitch meetings and the volume of actual sales agents are seeing.
“Stuff is selling,” one TV agent at a Big Three agency tells me. “It’s not like it’s completely dead — which I think is, you know, a lot of the conversations I’m sure you’re having. Sometimes people feel like it’s 100 percent dead. I obviously would not say that. People are being really specific in what they’re buying, and buyers are not buying a ton.”
The subject of Part 1 of our summer guide — Apple TV+ — is one of those buyers that has always been choosy, but this person notes that the streamer is “open for business” and looking to develop new shows at about the same clip as last year. My colleague Ashley Cullins recently scooped the streamer’s new pay structure for film and TV creators, which includes big backend potential in success — a show doesn’t have to be a massive hit in the Nielsen ratings, just a relative hit on Apple TV+ — but today we’ll get into who and what they’re looking for to meet those milestones.
The nearly six-year-old streaming service has always had a very narrowly curated slate, so narrow as to generate suspicion, as some industry insiders still occasionally question the seriousness of the tech titan’s Hollywood ambitions. But Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said that the studio and streaming division of the company does not exist solely to market its hardware.
“I don’t have it in my mind that I’m going to sell more iPhones because of it,” he said in a cover story on Apple TV+ and its $200 million Brad Pitt racing movie F1, which premiered over the weekend to a solid $55 million-plus at the domestic box office ($144 million worldwide). “I think about it as a business. And just like we leverage the best of Apple across iPhones and across our services, we try to leverage the best of Apple TV+.” (Which perhaps still sounds like it’s there to help move hardware?)
Alright, so Cook doesn’t exactly talk about storytelling like a Tinseltown romantic. But a cover interview with a Hollywood trade mag marks a step closer to the industry, and he sounds serious about the future of Apple TV+, which in the first half of 2025 alone has found several series rocketing into Nielsen’s top 10, including season 2 of Severance and Silo in the same week. And inside-baseball comedy The Studio, about the business of Hollywood, has caught the attention of all the industry folk it gently skewers, even if it isn’t a ratings giant.
📺 In today’s guide to selling to Apple TV+:
What kinds of shows Apple TV+ is actively looking to buy this summer (and a few hot titles already in the pipeline)
The types of series actually working on the platform now — and not
Why agents say Apple still thinks like Old Hollywood
The per-episode price tag on The Morning Show (and Apple’s typical budget range)
Who really has greenlight power at Apple TV+
The creative execs at the streamer with momentum who’ve impressed top agents as smart players and good collaborators
How Apple’s team structure breaks the industry mold — and why they like it that way
The genre Apple “always wants” — but still resists
And the genre that’s a total no-go, even as rivals chase it