Longtime Apple content material chief Eddy Cue instructed a SXSW crowd on Sunday that Apple TV+ doesn’t make as many TV reveals and films as its opponents for a similar motive that the tech large doesn’t make as many {hardware} merchandise as some opponents.

Cue, Apple’s senior VP of companies and a 36-year firm veteran, took the stage on the competition in Austin, Texas with Ben Stiller, govt producer and director of Apple TV+’s buzzy drama “Severance,” for a dialog that veered into the state of Apple’s enterprise, the destiny of Showtime and deep into particulars of the “Severance” origin story because the sequence awaits its Season 2 finale dropping on March 21.

“If you do one thing that’s nice, it ought to resonate with lots of people — and hopefully everybody. And so after we take into consideration our reveals and we take into consideration our merchandise, we’re not designing them for a small subset of individuals. We design them for everybody. We notice we could not get everybody to look at or everybody to make use of our merchandise, however we consider them in that method,” Cue mentioned in the course of the 42-minute dialog with Stiller.

“Once more, in case you concentrate on doing a couple of issues, you would possibly get one thing proper. And I believe that the present has achieved that in spades. It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen the present seize the creativeness. I used to be in Singapore final week, and once I was speaking to those who knew I used to be concerned with TV+, that is the very first thing that comes up,” Cue mentioned.

Stiller acknowledged that Cue and the programming group at Apple TV+ have a tough job in breaking new TV sequence and films in such a crowded leisure atmosphere.

“These days, it’s so arduous to have one thing that breaks by means of, and you could truly get individuals to look at and to see, as a result of there’s a lot,” Stiller noticed. “I imply, our era — we’re about similar age — it was completely different. You go to the films — the films have been the factor after we have been youngsters, and tv was tv — however there wasn’t all this different stuff on the market. And I’m curious the way you take care of that, as somebody who’s working Apple TV and music. There are all these completely different parts which are grabbing individuals’s consideration. How do you truly get a conglomerate of people that truly are listening to the factor you’re making, as a result of there’s so many good issues on the market? It’s simply arduous to get individuals’s consideration.”

Cue emphasised the significance of curation in Apple’s ethos of providing premium merchandise in all that they do.

“A part of what we’ve mentioned is we’re betting every thing on the reveals that we’re doing, as a result of we’re not going to throw 20 reveals up in opposition to the wall and hope that one sticks. Those that we do, all of them want to stay, in any other case we have now nothing else,” Cue mentioned. “And I believe that strain is an efficient factor, as a result of it makes you be higher.”

Cue praised “Severance” because the uncommon instance of a present that drives cultural dialog week to week. He famous that Apple sees the excessive stage of fan engagement round podcasts and YouTube content material dedicated to analyzing every episode.

“It’s been a very long time since we’ve seen a present like this, the place it’s captured so many individuals’s creativeness and the tradition and the viewers,” Cue mentioned. “This jogs my memory of reveals again within the days when tv — you tune in on a selected evening and all people was so excited all week to get to the following episode. And that’s what that is like.”

Amongst different matters addressed by Cue and Stiller:

Stiller reduce proper to the chase with the Apple senior chief: “How is Apple doing? As a result of generally I fear. Are you guys doing OK?” he requested Cue. “It’s a aggressive world, which is nice, however we’re doing all proper,” Cue responded. “We’re OK. We’re, such as you, attempting to attempt to be our greatest and create new issues that folks actually love.” To which Stiller replied, “OK, good.”

Whereas discussing his previous work for Showtime, Stiller went off on a tangent asking in regards to the destiny of the pay TV service. “Do they exist? requested Stiller, who directed the 2018 Showtime miniseries “Escape at Dannemora.” Cue was prepared with a solution. “They do. They’re a part of Paramount+.”

Stiller credited Apple TV+ leaders Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht for supporting his imaginative and prescient that Adam Scott play the lead function of Mark S. in “Severance” even once they didn’t see it themselves as first. Cue and Stiller reminisced how the present was one of many first that was greenlighted for Apple TV+ again in 2019. Scott was in Stiller’s thoughts as they introduced the pilot script by Dan Erickson to life.

“Adam Scott was all the time in my thoughts to play Mark,” Stiller mentioned. “It wasn’t that [Van Amburg and Erlicht] weren’t large followers of Adam’s, however they simply noticed [the role] in another way. And Apple TV+ was simply beginning out. And I mentioned, ‘Effectively, all proper, we are able to discover another concepts,’ which we did. However then in the end, I mentioned, ‘I actually suppose Adam could be the man’ they usually have been actually open to it. After which he did a studying, they usually have been like, ‘Yeah, he’s the man.’ That to me was the start of this artistic course of that was like, OK it’s going to be an actual backwards and forwards and likewise a trusting of who you’re working with.”

(Disclosure: Selection and SXSW share a typical proprietor in PMC.)