“Apple Inc is betting on acclaimed director and producer Steven Spielberg for its first major foray into creating original video content,” Joe Flint and Tripp Mickle report for The Wall Street Journal. “The tech giant has struck a deal with Mr. Spielberg’s Amblin Television and Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal television production unit to make new episodes of ‘Amazing Stories,’ a science fiction and horror anthology series that ran on NBC in the 1980s, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“The budget for ‘Amazing Stories’ will be more than $5 million an episode, according to an executive involved in the project,” Flint and Mickle report. “‘Amazing Stories’ is the first show to be greenlit by Apple since it poached Sony Corp.’s top Hollywood television executives Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht in June to help spearhead the tech company’s push into original programming.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s also amazing how smoothly the inks flows onto the dotted line when experienced hands are finally involved.
Now, for those of us who remember, this is a somewhat curious choice because Spielberg’s “Amazing Stories” was not a ratings hit back in the 1980s – likely due to the audience’s sky high expectations. The series did receive 12 Emmy nominations and won five, but it was not renewed by NBC after its initial two-year contract.
Those of us here who watched it live on NBC back in 1985-87, remember the series and liked it.
We’ll see if 30 years, $5 million per episode, and no network television constraints can help make “Amazing Stories” really take off this time.
All of you ’80s kids will likely remember the show’s open:
Why? It wasn’t good back then.
You are 100% correct. I am (and have been for many years) a Spielberg fan, but Amazing Stories was a huge disappointment. There were no episodes that were even at the level of the original Twilight Zone series, including episodes from the 1959 season.
Seems like Apple is signing up a bunch of old guys whose better days are in the history books rather than trying to catch someone on the rise.
I seem to remember Steve Jobs say he steered Apple to where the Puck was going (Wayne Gretzky quote). Tim Cook and Co seem to be going where the puck has been.
Ok. Props.
Rehashing an old remake is not “original” content.
Plus, it will be PG or PG13 at the worst (or best).
Thank god Apple didn’t get Game of Thrones back in the day, it would have been “sanitized” for kids and the general public.
I loved Amazing Stories back in the day, and am looking forward to this. The rest of you numbskulls can just keep watching the Kardashians.
How is this NOT original content. Presumably they will tell new stories. Hopefully they are giving it the budgets that Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix are giving their flagship shows.
I wonder how much of tim cooks personal adjenda will be written into each story. I sure hope he wont see this as a way to push his politics, morals and lifestyle. It seems TV is so skewed in one direction. What I would lile is a computer company that makes tech stuff and a media company that stays to entertaining and not trying to force their ways on me.