AppleInsider Staff
Apple recently inked a large eight-figure overall deal with screenwriter Tracy Oliver, known for penning "Girls Trip" and "Little," securing the writer's services for years to come.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Oliver will develop TV and feature film projects for Apple TV+ under her Tracy Yvonne Productions company.
Like her past films, Oliver is expected to focus on "diverse and meaningful" stories, content that fits well with Apple's guiding corporate principles. Tracy Yvonne Productions also aims to improve inclusiveness in an industry historically dominated by white men, the report said.
Oliver won critical acclaim and commercial success with "Girls Trip," a film co-written by Kenya Barris. With the movie's breakout success, the screenwriter became the first black woman to pen a film that ultimately grossed over $100 million at the box office.
In addition to "Girls Trip," Oliver's credits include "Little," "The Sun Is Also a Star" and "Barbershop: The Next Cut." She also developed and executive produces "The First Wives Club" for BET+ and is working alongside Amy Poehler on a comedy series for Amazon, the report said.
Oliver joins other big-name Hollywood personalities to commit to overall deals at Apple. Leonardo DiCaprio, Idris Elba, Cary Fukunaga, Sharon Horgan, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Martin Scorsese, Oprah Winfrey have all signed multi-year contracts to produce content for the tech giant.
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
3 Comments
Eight figures. Heapa moolah.
"Girls Trip" was a hit. It's accomplishment is even more impressive considering that it had plenty of competition as 2017 was a monster year, and it is one of the few "pure comedies" - as opposed to action/comedy hybrids - to surpass $100 million since the late 2000s (and even that is mostly Judd Apatow projects). That said: "Little" and especially (sadly) "The Sun Is Also a Star" were flops. "Barbershop: The Next Cut" merely did OK.
In isolation, you can't argue with the idea that a streaming network needs as much content as possible. Disney+ is giving us one-off movies aimed at - I guess - parents who watched the Disney Channel original series as kids like 15 years ago? But as I have mentioned several times, Apple TV+ is aiming at too narrow a slice of the market. That worked 30-40 years ago if you were a domestic basic cable operation supported by must-carry policies (meaning that only a tiny percentage of the people paying for it had to watch it) and were ad-supported as well like Lifetime, BET, The Nashville Network, Bravo etc. (you know, the networks that are now signing "live TV" deals with anyone that will take them - Roku, Sling, Plex, mobile carrier networks, you name it - in order to survive). But shutting off 70-80% of the viewing audience beyond an occasional "Ted Lasso" isn't going to cut it for a streaming network that requires overt financial opt-in, even if its $5 a month is far cheaper than the competition.
Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos are west coast progressives. I guarantee you that they personally loathe much of the content on Netflix. But they realize that they are running a broad-based global business which means that their programming content has to consist of more than what they and their social circle believe should be aired. At some point Apple TV+'s brass will need to come to the same conclusion.