Record-setting sales are almost as much an annual Sundance ritual as complaints about freezing in long lines, but the $25 million–plus Apple spent to secure one of the festival’s opening night movies was jaw-dropping even in an era when streaming services regularly shell out huge sums for otherwise low-key projects.
The price tag for
CODA, a confident tear-jerker about a hearing daughter of deaf parents, doesn’t seem categorically different from the $30 million Netflix spent on
Malcolm & Marie, a pandemic-shot chamber drama that is basically two hours of black-and-white footage of movie stars yelling at each other. But while Netflix is writing big checks from a position of strength, Apple TV+ has struggled to amass a catalog of hits big enough to keep viewers on the hook. According to a recent survey, nearly half of respondents canceled at least one streaming service between April and October of last year, which means that viewers are starting to hit their limit on how man