Apple hasn’t officially greenlit a sequel to last year’s blockbuster “F1: The Movie,” but Eddy Cue — who oversees the tech giant’s entertainment businesses — said one will “hopefully” be coming, in partnership once again with Jerry Bruckheimer.
Cue, senior vice president of services and health at Apple, took the main stage at the Cannes Palais convention center Monday at the Cannes Lions festival with Bruckheimer, the longtime Hollywood producer who teamed with Apple for last year’s hit “F1: The Movie” for Apple Original Films. Cue’s appearance was queued up for his recognition as Cannes Lions’ Entertainment Person of the Year, with the festival citing his leadership of the tech giant’s entertainment and services businesses, including Apple Music and the Apple TV streaming service.
“I can’t even say this is a dream come true, because I couldn’t even dream that way,” Cue told Bruckheimer about the award. “I have an amazing team of folks I get to work with every day that have made this all possible. The great thing is we’re just getting started, so there’s a lot more to do.”
Bruckheimer kicked off the conversation by praising Cue and the Apple team. “I’m really excited because we’re going to come back and hopefully make another ‘F1,’” he said. Bruckheimer also has another movie project in the works with Apple about UFOs alongside producer Joseph Kosinski that he described as “kind of ‘All the President’s Men’ about what the government’s been hiding about UAPs [unidentified anomalous phenomena] all these years.” Said Bruckheimer: “It’s going to be a true story, and it’s going to be, I mean, mind-boggling.”
About working with Apple, Bruckheimer said, “When you have the team that Eddy put together, along with all the previous inventions that they had, it makes it so easy to work at a place like that.”
Starring Brad Pitt as a race car driver who comes out of retirement to make a run at the Formula 1 circuit, “F1: The Movie” took in $634 million at the worldwide box office — making it Pitt’s biggest movie of all time, Cue noted. “One of the things that I loved about it is you felt great when you walked out,” he said, adding: “You loved it when you were walking out of [a movie theater] or watching it alone.”
According to Cue, the way Apple operates today is still based on “the foundation beliefs” of Steve Jobs. “There’s no doubt, I think, that he’d be incredibly proud of the work that we’ve done in this area,” Cue said.
Cue recalled that early in his career, before Apple was even thinking about building its own entertainment studio, he once asked Steve Jobs — who was the CEO of Apple and Pixar at the same time — “Why is it that Pixar can always create one hit after another, and that doesn’t happen everywhere else?” Jobs’ comment was it’s “always about the story,” Cue said. “It begins and ends with the story. If you don’t have a story, you can’t have a great show, and that always resonated with me about the things that we’re trying to do.”
Cue recalled that when Apple was gearing up ahead of the 2019 launch of Apple TV+, “at the time there was certainly lots of other companies out there doing it. We didn’t have any knowledge [of the streaming business], but we had this belief that everyone was chasing a lot of quantity and not quality, and we’ve always been about trying to be the best, not the most, and so we wanted to build television and movies a place where the best storytellers, the best creators, the best writers, the best directors would want to come work there and do their best work.”
Apple decided from the get-go that it wouldn’t license content for the streaming service, Cue said.
“We did something that I believe that most people told me you couldn’t do, and they were probably right, which is you can’t start a movie or TV [streaming service] without licensing content and getting some of the old content that’s out there,” he told Bruckheimer. “But we’ve always felt like if we were putting our name on it, it was kind of weird we were going to put our name on something we didn’t help create, so we said we’re going to start with nothing, we’re going to start with something that all shows that we create, which meant we had, you know, five or six shows when we launched the service.”
Cue said it took him two years to find the right execs to head Apple’s original entertainment division, ultimately hiring former Sony Pictures Television execs Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg in 2017. “The most important thing was the people that we were going to hire and the people that we were going to work with,” he said.
Cue gave a shout-out to Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston as the “first people to believe in us” when they were pitching “The Morning Show” around town.
“I thought the show was amazing,” Cue said. “But we had to go and convince them, and obviously others wanted the show as well… and I came down to the realization that we weren’t going to get it, because somebody would always offer more, or whatever, but I thought we were special, and so I asked for a meeting with both of them.” Cue asked Witherspoon and Aniston “whether they thought they were going to make one of the best shows ever in television. They said yes, and I said, ‘So do I. I think it’s going to be one of the best. That means you need to do it with us, and the reason you have to do it with us is because we don’t have any other shows! So we believe 100% in what you’re doing, and we’re going to launch our service on that.”
Cue proudly noted that Apple TV is now an EGOT winner, after the Broadway musical adaptation of original series “Schmigadoon!” won a Tony award. Apple earned the Oscar for best picture for its uplifting 2021 drama “CODA,” while it took home a Grammy for Chris Stapleton’s “Bad as I Used to Be” from “F1: The Movie.” The company has won multiple Emmys, with Apple TV’s Hollywood satire “The Studio” last year taking home 13 trophies, a record for a comedy series in a single year as well as for a first-year series.
“So we’ve had a lot of success with people recognizing the work,” Cue said, “but it comes down to the people you hire and the people that surround you.”
Meanwhile, Bruckheimer admitted that he never really knows if a movie he’s making will become a hit. “You think you know it’s going to be a hit, but nobody knows,” he said. “And I’ve been in Hollywood long enough where I’ve seen movies that test it through the roof, and nobody showed up.”
Cue is an Apple lifer, having joined the company in 1989. After steering the launch of iTunes (2003) and the App Store (2008), he has led Apple’s expansion into TV and movies with the Apple TV streaming service.
In his closing remarks at the Palais, Cue again expressed gratitude that he and Apple have been recognized with the Cannes Lions award. “I was a computer science major, engineering major, and for me to be here and what we’ve accomplished in this area, I could have never imagined,” said Cue. He added to Bruckheimer, “You’re a true legend, but the best part about it is you’re a true legend still creating incredible things.”