Apple’s WWII drama Greyhound, starring and written by Tom Hanks, has become the largest opening weekend release ever for Apple TV+, including series that have bowed on the service, Deadline reports, citing “sources close to Apple.”
In the new film Greyhound, inspired by real events, Captain Ernest Krause (Tom Hanks) leads an international convoy of 37 ships on a treacherous mission across the Atlantic ocean to deliver thousands of soldiers and much-needed supplies to Allied forces.
Mike Fleming Jr. for Deadline:
I’m told that the film turned in a viewing audience commensurate with a summer theatrical box office big hit, which of course Greyhound was meant to be until it moved from Sony to Apple because of the uncertainty of movie theaters after COVID-19. Beyond generating the largest opening weekend ever for Apple TV+, 30% of its viewers were new to the service.
This will give Tom Hanks something to brag about this evening when he appears on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
The record probably won’t last, as Apple Worldwide Video heads Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht have been on a tear, reeling in the Martin Scorsese-directed Leonardo DiCaprio-Robert De Niro-starrer Killers of the Flower Moon, the Antoine Fuqua-Will Smith runaway slave thriller Emancipation, and closing last week’s big deal for Snow Blind, the Gustav Moller-directed graphic novel adaptation to star Jake Gyllenhaal. There is another one from Playtone’s Hanks and Goetzman, who with Steven Spielberg are back with another WWII limited series, Masters of the Air. That begins production next March.
MacDailyNews Take: 30% of Greyhound viewers were new to Apple TV+! Mission accomplished!
Enjoyable film. Wish it had been longer. Theaters are great (when they get the presentation specs right) but so is a nice large screen OLED TV with Dolby Atmos at home.
I’m a long-time Apple user (I’ve probably purchased around 40 Apple devices over the decades). I’m a thrilled shareholder. I’m a Tom Hanks fan. I really wanted to like this movie.
But there were no plot twists, there was little-to-no character development, and just lots of yelling to turn the ship this way or that way. I guess I’m in the minority, since it’s getting raves on RottenTomatoes, but I was disappointed.
I really hope Apple TV+ can work out a deal to offer someone else’s library, because no matter what promising material they have coming up, for now I’ve pretty much watched the few shows which interest me. I don’t want to cancel, but if there’s not going to be anything new to watch for some time, it’s silly for me to continue. Such a shame they couldn’t have worked out something with Disney before they rolled out their own service!
Well, you would have needed to appreciate the many things that you did not: CGI, Tom Hanks, war movies in general, the heroic military man, and, in your case, especially so-called “procedurals” that this movie clearly is and like the many cop shows produced by Wolf are on TV.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, John. Perhaps this just wasn’t my genre, but I feel like CGI might be great, and what little I understand about the effects were done well, but the story just didn’t do anything for me. It started with a romance which went nowhere, he left, he fought, he got to the other side. Nothing compelling happened in between. I’ve enjoyed some war movies in the past, but this one seemed to be billed (at least by MDN) as a landmark for Apple TV+, worth the price of subscription all by itself. In my mind, it wasn’t. Again, thanks for your civil, thoughtful reply.
The quality of the the movie wasn’t what we billed as a landmark moment for Apple TV+, it was the number of viewers it would deliver, which it did.
I had thought I had seen you write that this movie alone justifies a subscription. If I am in error, I apologize and stand corrected.
A movie depends on its source material, in this case The Good Shepherd (1955) by C.S. Forester. The things you found lacking in the movie are equally absent from the book. If you liked the book, you would probably like the movie. If you didn’t like the book, you weren’t in the intended audience for the movie.
So who paid for all that military transportation during WWII and the subsequent Marshall Plan to reconstitute Europe’s economy? Surely not your taxes and certainly not War Bonds. It was the Federal Reserve Bank who simply printed the money or, more correctly, made the money via a ledger entry. Yes, taxes do not pay for the government’s federal expenditures of any kind.
There was not appreciable inflation beyond the typical rate increase. There was no wheelbarrows full of paper money for one bag of groceries such as doing the Weimar Republic.
And there was no inflation during the Wall St. Bailout nor now when the US Congress is rewarding itself, its relatives, and its wealthy donor class with free money. No inflation.
So the question arises why can’t Congress tell the Fed to do that ledger entry thing to pay for M4A known as Universal Single Payer known also as Medicare for All?
It’s because the wealthy are vindictive and selfish and acquisitive, playing the zero sum game: “If others get money, it will deprive me, so no one but I should get help and I will do all I can to perpetuate this status quo.”
M4A.
Is “artist” a new word for “unemployed”. Asking for a friend.
The UK continued to pay off loans to the US government until the end of 2006 – 61 years after the end of WW2. So not all the costs were accounted for using the ‘clever accounting’ that you describe.
This article seems to disagree with every single point you made above regarding WWII financing: https://www.encyclopedia.com/defense/energy-government-and-defense-magazines/financing-world-war-ii
And while inflation was kept to “just” 28%, that was achieved by wage and price controls – quite the opposite of what everyone is advocating for now.
Unfortunately, uncontrolled debt always ends badly and the longer the ponzi scheme is perpetrated the worse it’s going to be.
It was a good movie. All the better for being free. I’ve watched it twice already. I have to agree with the movie being a bit too short.
If Apple were to run one of these movies a month it would certainly help create interest in the platform.
It’s actually a decent question…though I’m not an advocate of MMT and that’s essentially the vein in which you prescribe.
I guess we will find out if the simple Fed ledger is just a figment of reality, or if creating herculean entries on the ledger will bring consequences, as we take the foray into the record setting “spend-it” mindset. Even the advocates of the theory believe inflation will raise its head at some point. Will it return to its room when the command is given? If so, I guess a new party-time is ahead.
If it’s that easy, I scratch my head wondering, “why now?” Have all the thinkers and systems prior been too dull to notice how easy it can really be? UBI for all…I’d like to start with $3.5k/month please. Work is wearying me.
Presidential candidate Andrew Yang proposed the “Freedom Dividend,” a monthly UBI of $1,000 to every American adult, the only serious proposal any of the candidates made. But that penal UBI would replace every single thing in the existing social safety net which would have included the money you already paid into your Social Security. And food stamps and such needed items like Aid To Dependent Children, and disability. You would lose them all.
This would have been a gross injustice. And it would have been confiscatory something no one wants to lose.
What about during a catastrophic health emergency? Well, that $1000 runs out and you no longer have access to SS which will have been replaced with that limited UBI.
So I am not for Yang’s vindictive and confiscatory UBI.
I think that the wealthy promise to give away their hoards but giving stuff away — probably relying on 501C3s to distribute it — like a monarch but this does not work because the homeless can’t write grants on their cheap Samsung cell phones, and they do not have a desk and files to organize the paperwork, so the monarch’s hoard does not reach the homeless living on the river bottom because they are essentially invisible.
That has always been my question too – are we really so much smarter today to have invented the perpetual motion money machine? And everyone in the past that worried about silly things like spending more than they make were just stupid suckers?
Everyone knows deep down that you just like you can’t beat the laws of compound interest, handing out free money will not end well. But we’re all willing to enjoy the ride as long as it lasts…
Socially responsible democracy is so foreign to Americans that they have no clue how to achieve it. A country that constantly flings the words socialism, communism, terrorism, and fascism like weapons without any idea of their definitions, constantly telling themselves they are the best place in the world while turning their noses up at those fleeing the shithole nations who agree with them, and wondering why the normal people of European social democracies no longer flee to American soil. (hint: the USA looks like a shithole country to them). Their elite still come to join the country that is run by, and for, elites. But for regular people, having no social safety net turns the health plan of a job into the power to work employees like slaves with the health of their families held hostage. The elites like to have their thumb on their employees. A country where all have equal health coverage regardless or race, wealth, or previous conditions, is a country where employees are free to choose the best employers, just as employers may choose the best employees. This is not the one-sided freedom Americans are used to.
Which is why the gov. needs to step-in with M4A since the corporation can’t provide proper compensation to workers. And M43A would not bankrupt the US which I proved above. This is because the Federal Reserve Bank is never full, is never empty, it never runs out of money.
Well I can see why America is so divided. This was supposed to be about the film Greyhound and Apple TV+ and look where it ended up. You can’t blame MDN this time.
I hope we’ll get a follow up. I already watched it twice. It’s a simple procedural film about a captain on a destroyer. I actually found it quite enjoyable for what it is. It is short, however, but the budget was only $50 million. Production was probably cut short. I would love to see a second one. $50 million is nothing for Apple. I could see an anthology.