Apple TV Plus to reportedly cost $10, with just five shows at launch
Apple TV Plus, the iPhone maker's streaming TV service to rival Netflix, will cost $9.99 per month when it launches in November.
That is a claim made this week by a Bloomberg report, which also states the Apple service will offer just five shows at launch.
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Such a limited selection is partly due to Apple's service being new, of course, but also due to Apple opting not to licence content from other companies, as Netflix and Amazon do with popular movies and TV shows.
According to Bloomberg, Apple TV Plus, which was announced back in March, will launch in November and from day one will include The Morning Show series featuring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon (trailer embedded below), See featuring Jason Momoa, a production called Truth Be Told featuring Octavia Spencer, a Steven Spielberg revival of Amazing Stories, and a documentary called Home.
The report, citing anonymous company insiders, came just hours after a separate article from the Financial Times claimed Apple had upped its TV production budget massively, from $1 billion to $6 billion. According to further unnamed insiders, Apple is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on The Morning Show, a drama series about a daily TV news show reminiscent of Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom.
This budget, according to the insiders, amounts to a higher cost per episode than Game of Thrones, which reportedly cost $15 million per episode in its final series.
Although that is certainly a large amount of cash to spend on TV production, it is dwarfed by the $14 billion Netflix is expected to spend in 2019, and the near-$24 billion Disney plans to spend on movies and its own new streaming service, Disney+, which also launches this fall.
That service will cost from $6.99 per month, or come with Hulu and a version of the ESPN sports network for $12.99 a month - the same price as an HD subscription for Netflix.
The $9.99 Apple will reportedly charge may seem like decent value against Netflix - especially when Apple will likely offer Ultra HD and HDR content with Dolby Atmos as part of the deal, instead of charging extra as Netflix does. But it isn't known for now how many episodes each of Apple's series has, and how quickly other content will come online, include a pair of documentaries from Oprah Winfrey, one about mental health and made alongside Prince Harry.
