If you get some magical “street cred” in the industry for simply being the party to win the bidding war over a film after it was already produced, shown at a film festivals, and critically acclaimed, then yeah, that seems at least silly if not creepy. Surely there’s a big different between a company funding the creation of a film, and a company just buying the rights to stream a completed film.

Or does Apple get extra goodwill from the logo almost assuredly in many of the pockets and homes of people in the industry?

Also when voting, the distributor is not highlighted. So I doubt the brand had any effect on voting itself.

I mean, there was reportedly a fierce bidding war to acquire the film, between (at least) Amazon and Apple. I don’t even think you can credit Apple for some unique insight into the potential of the film.

Having worked on a movie that had a (short, failed) Oscar push, you cannot underestimate who important (and expensive) promotion is to even just getting a nomination. Had CODA remained an indie darling on the festival circuit it almost certainly would not have won.

So maybe Apple is spending more money on better talent. Or maybe they're just funneling it better (big productions like Foundations instead of a bunch of cooking shows).

Is that really funnelling it 'better' though. I bet a lot more people watched that "bunch of cooking shows" that watched Foundation. Squid Games was one of the most talked about shows on TV since Game of Thrones when it came out and had a total budget that was probably less than the catering budget for 1 season of GoT.

Netflix seems to be betting big on the fact that that 50 weird quirky 1 million dollar shows of varying quality will bring in more total viewers than a single 50 million dollar prestige show.

Can't really take a comment seriously that puts Apple's film output over this. Besides Coda has Apple produced or even just distributed anything of comparable quality?

Instead they end up getting rated on drivel like "The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window" because that's what ends up getting pushed to subscribers to see.

A24/Searchlight do the same thing.

Acquiring rights and succeeding in distribution is an art and unfortunately $$ doesn’t = success.

This is expected. Netflix were the trailblazers. Of course everyone who comes after them will have an easier job doing it.

ATV+ doesn't have the glut of content that Netflix has, but pretty much all of their stuff is 8/10 or over on most rating sites. They might not be to your exact tastes, but they're still damn good.

AppleTV+'s take on Foundation is the best thing that could possibly happen to the books.

Asimov was a bad writer, and the product of his era. His ideas about Seldon crises were rather good, but everything around was just bad. People don't have dialogs, they proselytise and have monologues at each other. Women are non-existent, or serve as furniture (except maybe two characters in both series combined). There's a huge disconnect between what technology is imagined to do (FTL, detailed holographic maps of the Galaxy) and how it's used (calculations done with pen-and-paper, newspapers and communications printed out even on FTL ships). And so on.

Foundation series took the premise and ran away with it. And good for them.

Then we jump in time, the previous people are mostly dead and a new group of people talk in a room.

It's not exactly riveting stuff for TV.

Over the last 2-3 years, I sign up when a season of a show I hear good things about is completely out (Ted Lasso, Severance, etc) and then watch another show or movie or two for the month it takes me to finish that season.

I have never bumped into another show that made it worth renewing for a consecutive month, despite the show that I came for being totally worth the one month, and there being other shows that are strongly "related".

I will admit the production quality of the shows is very high on average, but that's not the same thing as the shows being very good.

Take Schmigadoon! for example. It's specifically aimed at people who love musicals and can spot all of the homages in it. Without that knowledge it's just a slightly above average comedy with singing bits.

The Morning Show is about women struggling in a workplace, not exactly something that would hook a random midwest dudebro, but still a damn good show for those who it's directed towards.