Inside Apple TV+’s $20 Billion Investment in Original Content: From ‘Severance’ to ‘Morning Show’

As Apple TV+ is allegedly trying to rein in their spending, Us is breaking down how much it cost to make some of their hit shows.

The streaming service was the subject of an exposé earlier this week on Bloomberg about how they invested $20 billion since their 2019 launch to produce original TV shows and movies. The outlet questioned that decision since Apple TV+’s attempt to compete against Netflix hasn’t been successful so far.

Some of the hefty costs for Apple include forking over more than $250 million on their Masters of the Air series, which boasted a star-studded cast including Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Barry Keoghan, Ben Radcliffe and Rafferty Law.

While Disney, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery are all cutting back to reduce their streaming losses, Apple TV+ reportedly paid The Morning Show stars Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston more than $2 million per episode for the fourth season — more than double what they made when the show debuted. The cast alone cost Apple $50 million, according to the report.

Severance — starring Adam Scott and directed by Ben Stiller — is another show that reached enough public attention to score a budget of $20 million per episode on the second season. The studio also allegedly spent more than $500 million combined on movies from directors Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott and Matthew Vaughn.

Such huge investment and subsequently strong reviews and awards nominations didn’t equal viewership. The streaming service is attracting just 0.2 percent of TV viewing in the U.S. — less viewing in one month than Netflix does in one day.

“Subscriber growth has been weak, with the platform’s original content a fraction of what rivals offer,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Geetha Ranganathan and Kevin Near wrote in a recent note, according to the article.

Other prestigious, costly programming featured on Apple TV+ includes For All Mankind, Servant, Defending Jacob, Slow Horses, Pachinko, Silo, Lessons in Chemistry and more. Earlier this summer, Presumed Innocent left an impression with Jake Gyllenhaal playing a prosecutor who becomes the prime suspect in the murder of his colleague with whom he was having an affair.

Lady in the Lake is another standout that is currently rolling out new episodes with Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram leading the cast. Director Alma Har’el recently opened up to Us Weekly about the challenges that came with running such a large production.

“There’s a lot of aspects that come from making something on television that [feels challenging]. I said cross-boarding and the mind f—k of all that [a.k.a.] shooting out of order,” she shared earlier this month. “But I think the biggest challenge is to take something of such a size and that has so much scope and has so much responsibility historically, politically and socially.”

Har’el concluded: “Then to manage and to find pockets of intimacy and to find pockets for untethered creativity. Just balancing those acts while managing so many people on set that have different expectations of the process.”