Three Amazon video content development executives jump ship for fledgling Apple production effort

Apple is further growing its stable of video streaming executives, poaching three high-level staffers from Amazon with one who will retain focused on children's programming development.

Confirmed by Variety on Thursday afternoon, Amazon Video Business Affairs executive Tara Pietri will head up legal affairs for Apple. The lead of Amazon's child-centric video program, Tara Sorensen, is moving laterally at Apple and will have substantively the same role.

International development executive Carina Walker will also hold a similar position at Apple.

Sorensen will report to Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht, formerly of Sony Television. Walker will report to Morgan Wandell — also once from Amazon, and brought on-board in October.

Erlicht and Van Amburg are said to be tasked with securing "around a dozen" original TV shows, with four of them known. Sorensen's hire is the first indication that Apple is looking at developing children's programming.

A recent move by Apple in sourcing unique content is a new morning show-related drama starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. Also, Apple has reportedly given a blank check to Drake to produce whatever shows or movies he wants.

In October, Apple signed a deal with Amblin Television and NBCUniversal to revive "Amazing Stories," an anthology science fiction series created by Steven Spielberg that ran for two seasons in the 1980s. Apple is expected to air 10 episodes, spending over $5 million on each show.

More recently, Apple signed a deal with "Star Trek" and "Battlestar Galactica" reboot alum Ronald D. Moore to pen a new space drama.

All four ventures are believed to be part of a broader $1 billion investment in original video programming, concentrating on big-budget dramas similar to "Breaking Bad" or "Game of Thrones." Those efforts are reportedly being led by the June hiring of former Sony Pictures Television executives Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, as well as development head Matt Cherniss.

16 Comments

macky the macky 4801 comments · 15 Years

About 6 years ago

I think Apple is pissing money away on programming...

gmgravytrain 883 comments · 8 Years

macky the macky said:

I think Apple is pissing money away on programming...

I think Apple needs to grow its services revenue and loads of content seems to be a good way do it if Apple intends to get into the video streaming business. You believe Apple is pissing away its money despite the fact that Netflix carries a P/E of 190 and Apple carries a P/E of 19. I might be missing something but Netflix is valued 10X higher than Apple. Wall Street certainly doesn't think Netflix is pissing away its money on content as long as it can keep growing its subscriber base. Amazon is doing the same thing as Netflix and is constantly being praised to high heaven over Prime Video. Apple needs something to boost its value and programming seems to be working quite well for those other companies I mentioned.

applesnoranges 50 comments · 9 Years

This is starting to get interesting... ❄️☃️❄️

mentalrecon 11 comments · 8 Years

What an odd headline! People don't "jump ship" to join a "fledgling" effort. They leave to work on exciting projects that they believe can or will be successful and they leave for money. People in movie/TV production more often leave to work on exciting projects that could possible win them accolades. Since none of us really know what Apple is up to, we can only speculate, but why be so negative?

Mike Wuerthele 6897 comments · 8 Years

mentalrecon said:

What an odd headline! People don't "jump ship" to join a "fledgling" effort. They leave to work on exciting projects that they believe can or will be successful and they leave for money. People in movie/TV production more often leave to work on exciting projects that could possible win them accolades. Since none of us really know what Apple is up to, we can only speculate, but why be so negative?

No negativity present.