Apple recently reviewed their overspending on movie projects and decide to pull back on theatrical rollouts by capping the budget for “most” of their future releases at $80M or less.
The streamer is also going to be limiting “event-worthy theatrical runs” to just 1 to 2 films per year. This comes after Apple’s recent commercial failures, some of which cost $200M+ to produce (“Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Napoleon”). They also recently slashed theatrical distribution on their Brad Pitt/George Clooney film, “Wolfs,” to just a very limited one-week run next Friday.
What was the cause of this sudden shift by Apple?
Deadline’s Mike Fleming is reporting that it was all because of “the shrapnel” that studio chiefs Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg got for betting wrong that “Fly Me to the Moon” would work in theaters. They banked on the star power of Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, and sky-high test screening scores that made Apple believe the film would make for some great “summer counterprogramming”.
Its failure left Apple brass shy about going right back to the well on “Wolfs.”
The $100M budgeted “Fly Me To The Moon” was a flat-out disaster for Apple, and that’s despite the presence of Tatum and Johansson. We barely saw any ads for the romcom — many didn’t even know the film existed until it was released. The end result was that the film only grossed $20M domestically and is destine for $80M+ in losses
No wonder Apple TV recently fired their head of marketing. The streamer is a total mess when it comes to their theatrical runs. Up next for them is Steve McQueen’s “Blitz” which is also set for just a one-week Oscar qualifying run in November.