A selection of movies licensed to Apple TV+ earlier in 2024.
Subscribers of Apple TV+ could get a lot more choice of what to watch, with Apple allegedly in talks to license more Hollywood films for the service.
Apple is reportedly in talks with major Hollywood studios to try and license more content for its streaming services, people familiar with the talks told Bloomberg on Thursday. It has allegedly spoken to several major players about the possibility of acquiring more movies from their libraries to add to the service.
There are no indications of how long the content could be made available on Apple TV+, but it may be a short-term offering. March’s collection of licensed movies was taken down on June 30, marking about four months of availability.
Apple could indeed license for longer or go down a strategy of providing limited-run access to content and cycling them out periodically. For services like Netflix, which rely on a wide breadth of content to offer to subscribers, there is a regular cycle of licensed content joining and leaving the catalog.
For Apple, however, it’s offering of primarily original or exclusive content, as well as its foray into sports, makes it hard to consider the service going for long-term content licensing, or doing so with large catalogs. The concern is that its own content could be lost in a sea of licensed films if it went down that route.
