Apple TV Plus

A warlord brings chaos in Foundation S3 trailer

Apple TV Plus, culture, Entertainment, foundation, Isaac Asimov, streaming television / Mike M. / June 11, 2025

Foundation returns for a third season next month on Apple TV+.

Foundation, Apple TV+’s lavish adaptation (or re-mix, if you prefer) of Isaac Asimov’s seminal sci-fi series, returns for its third season next month, and the streaming platform has dropped an official trailer to give us a taste of what’s in store.

As previously reported, the first season ended with a major time jump of 138 years, and S2 focused on the Second Crisis: imminent war between Empire and the Foundation, along with an enemy seeking to destroy Empire from within. The Foundation, meanwhile, adopted the propaganda tactics of religion to recruit new acolytes to the cause. We also met a colony of “Mentalics” with psionic abilities. We’re getting another mega time jump for the Third Crisis.

Per the official premise:

Set 152 years after the events of S2, The Foundation has become increasingly established far beyond its humble beginnings while the Cleonic Dynasty’s Empire has dwindled. As both of these galactic powers forge an uneasy alliance, a threat to the entire galaxy appears in the fearsome form of a warlord known as “The Mule” whose sights are set on ruling the universe by use of physical and military force, as well as mind control. It’s anyone’s guess who will win, who will lose, who will live, and who will die as Hari Seldon, Gaal Dornick, the Cleons and Demerzel play a potentially deadly game of intergalactic chess.

Most of the main cast is returning: Lee Pace as Brother Day, Cassian Bilton as Brother Dawn, Terrence Mann as Brother Dusk, Jared Harris as Hari Seldon, Lou Llobell as Gaal, and Laura Birn as Eto Demerzel. Pilou Asbæk plays the Mule. New S3 cast members include Alexander Siddig as Dr. Ebling Mis, a Seldon fan and self-taught psychohistorian; Troy Kotsur as Preem Palver, leader of a planet of psychics; Cherry Jones as Foundation Ambassador Quent; Brandon P. Bell as Han Pritcher; Synnøve Karlsen as Bayta Mallow; Cody Fern as Toran Mallow; Tómas Lemarquis as Magnifico Giganticus; Yootha Wong-Loi-Sing as Song; and Leo Bill as Mayor Indbur.

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Breaking down why Apple TVs are privacy advocates’ go-to streaming device

ads, Apple, Apple TV, Apple TV Plus, Features, privacy, streaming, Tech, TVs / 9u50fv / June 1, 2025

Using the Apple TV app or an Apple account means giving Apple more data, though.

Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Every time I write an article about the escalating advertising and tracking on today’s TVs, someone brings up Apple TV boxes. Among smart TVs, streaming sticks, and other streaming devices, Apple TVs are largely viewed as a safe haven.

“Just disconnect your TV from the Internet and use an Apple TV box.”

That’s the common guidance you’ll hear from Ars readers for those seeking the joys of streaming without giving up too much privacy. Based on our research and the experts we’ve consulted, that advice is pretty solid, as Apple TVs offer significantly more privacy than other streaming hardware providers.

But how private are Apple TV boxes, really? Apple TVs don’t use automatic content recognition (ACR, a user-tracking technology leveraged by nearly all smart TVs and streaming devices), but could that change? And what about the software that Apple TV users do use—could those apps provide information about you to advertisers or Apple?

In this article, we’ll delve into what makes the Apple TV’s privacy stand out and examine whether users should expect the limited ads and enhanced privacy to last forever.

Apple TV boxes limit tracking out of the box

One of the simplest ways Apple TVs ensure better privacy is through their setup process, during which you can disable Siri, location tracking, and sending analytics data to Apple. During setup, users also receive several opportunities to review Apple’s data and privacy policies. Also off by default is the boxes’ ability to send voice input data to Apple.

Most other streaming devices require users to navigate through pages of settings to disable similar tracking capabilities, which most people are unlikely to do. Apple’s approach creates a line of defense against snooping, even for those unaware of how invasive smart devices can be.

Apple TVs running tvOS 14.5 and later also make third-party app tracking more difficult by requiring such apps to request permission before they can track users.

“If you choose Ask App Not to Track, the app developer can’t access the system advertising identifier (IDFA), which is often used to track,” Apple says. “The app is also not permitted to track your activity using other information that identifies you or your device, like your email address.”

Users can access the Apple TV settings and disable the ability of third-party apps to ask permission for tracking. However, Apple could further enhance privacy by enabling this setting by default.

The Apple TV also lets users control which apps can access the set-top box’s Bluetooth functionality, photos, music, and HomeKit data (if applicable), and the remote’s microphone.

“Apple’s primary business model isn’t dependent on selling targeted ads, so it has somewhat less incentive to harvest and monetize incredible amounts of your data,” said RJ Cross, director of the consumer privacy program at the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). “I personally trust them more with my data than other tech companies.”

What if you share analytics data?

If you allow your Apple TV to share analytics data with Apple or app developers, that data won’t be personally identifiable, Apple says. Any collected personal data is “not logged at all, removed from reports before they’re sent to Apple, or protected by techniques, such as differential privacy,” Apple says.

Differential privacy, which injects noise into collected data, is one of the most common methods used for anonymizing data. In support documentation (PDF), Apple details its use of differential privacy:

The first step we take is to privatize the information using local differential privacy on the user’s device. The purpose of privatization is to assure that Apple’s servers don’t receive clear data. Device identifiers are removed from the data, and it is transmitted to Apple over an encrypted channel. The Apple analysis system ingests the differentially private contributions, dropping IP addresses and other metadata. The final stage is aggregation, where the privatized records are processed to compute the relevant statistics, and the aggregate statistics are then shared with relevant Apple teams. Both the ingestion and aggregation stages are performed in a restricted access environment so even the privatized data isn’t broadly accessible to Apple employees.

What if you use an Apple account with your Apple TV?

Another factor to consider is Apple’s privacy policy regarding Apple accounts, formerly Apple IDs.

Apple support documentation says you “need” an Apple account to use an Apple TV, but you can use the hardware without one. Still, it’s common for people to log into Apple accounts on their Apple TV boxes because it makes it easier to link with other Apple products. Another reason someone might link an Apple TV box with an Apple account is to use the Apple TV app, a common way to stream on Apple TV boxes.

So what type of data does Apple harvest from Apple accounts? According to its privacy policy, the company gathers usage data, such as “data about your activity on and use of” Apple offerings, including “app launches within our services…; browsing history; search history; [and] product interaction.”

Other types of data Apple may collect from Apple accounts include transaction information (Apple says this is “data about purchases of Apple products and services or transactions facilitated by Apple, including purchases on Apple platforms”), account information (“including email address, devices registered, account status, and age”), device information (including serial number and browser type), contact information (including physical address and phone number), and payment information (including bank details). None of that is surprising considering the type of data needed to make an Apple account work.

Many Apple TV users can expect Apple to gather more data from their Apple account usage on other devices, such as iPhones or Macs. However, if you use the same Apple account across multiple devices, Apple recognizes that all the data it has collected from, for example, your iPhone activity, also applies to you as an Apple TV user.

A potential workaround could be maintaining multiple Apple accounts. With an Apple account solely dedicated to your Apple TV box and Apple TV hardware and software tracking disabled as much as possible, Apple would have minimal data to ascribe to you as an Apple TV owner. You can also use your Apple TV box without an Apple account, but then you won’t be able to use the Apple TV app, one of the device’s key features.

Data collection via the Apple TV app

You can download third-party apps like Netflix and Hulu onto an Apple TV box, but most TV and movie watching on Apple TV boxes likely occurs via the Apple TV app. The app is necessary for watching content on the Apple TV+ streaming service, but it also drives usage by providing access to the libraries of many (but not all) popular streaming apps in one location. So understanding the Apple TV app’s privacy policy is critical to evaluating how private Apple TV activity truly is.

As expected, some of the data the app gathers is necessary for the software to work. That includes, according to the app’s privacy policy, “information about your purchases, downloads, activity in the Apple TV app, the content you watch, and where you watch it in the Apple TV app and in connected apps on any of your supported devices.” That all makes sense for ensuring that the app remembers things like which episode of Severance you’re on across devices.

Apple collects other data, though, that isn’t necessary for functionality. It says it gathers data on things like the “features you use (for example, Continue Watching or Library),” content pages you view, how you interact with notifications, and approximate location information (that Apple says doesn’t identify users) to help improve the app.

Additionally, Apple tracks the terms you search for within the app, per its policy:

We use Apple TV search data to improve models that power Apple TV. For example, aggregate Apple TV search queries are used to fine-tune the Apple TV search model.

This data usage is less intrusive than that of other streaming devices, which might track your activity and then sell that data to third-party advertisers. But some people may be hesitant about having any of their activities tracked to benefit a multi-trillion-dollar conglomerate.

Data collected from the Apple TV app used for ads

By default, the Apple TV app also tracks “what you watch, your purchases, subscriptions, downloads, browsing, and other activities in the Apple TV app” to make personalized content recommendations. Content recommendations aren’t ads in the traditional sense but instead provide a way for Apple to push you toward products by analyzing data it has on you.

You can disable the Apple TV app’s personalized recommendations, but it’s a little harder than you might expect since you can’t do it through the app. Instead, you need to go to the Apple TV settings and then select Apps > TV > Use Play History > Off.

The most privacy-conscious users may wish that personalized recommendations were off by default. Darío Maestro, senior legal fellow at the nonprofit Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), noted to Ars that even though Apple TV users can opt out of personalized content recommendations, “many will not realize they can.”

Apple can also use data it gathers on you from the Apple TV app to serve traditional ads. If you allow your Apple TV box to track your location, the Apple TV app can also track your location. That data can “be used to serve geographically relevant ads,” according to the Apple TV app privacy policy. Location tracking, however, is off by default on Apple TV boxes.

Apple’s tvOS doesn’t have integrated ads. For comparison, some TV OSes, like Roku OS and LG’s webOS, show ads on the OS’s home screen and/or when showing screensavers.

But data gathered from the Apple TV app can still help Apple’s advertising efforts. This can happen if you allow personalized ads in other Apple apps serving targeted apps, such as Apple News, the App Store, or Stocks. In such cases, Apple may apply data gathered from the Apple TV app, “including information about the movies and TV shows you purchase from Apple, to serve ads in those apps that are more relevant to you,” the Apple TV app privacy policy says.

Apple also provides third-party advertisers and strategic partners with “non-personal data” gathered from the Apple TV app:

We provide some non-personal data to our advertisers and strategic partners that work with Apple to provide our products and services, help Apple market to customers, and sell ads on Apple’s behalf to display on the App Store and Apple News and Stocks.

Apple also shares non-personal data from the Apple TV with third parties, such as content owners, so they can pay royalties, gauge how much people are watching their shows or movies, “and improve their associated products and services,” Apple says.

Apple’s policy notes:

For example, we may share non-personal data about your transactions, viewing activity, and region, as well as aggregated user demographics[,] such as age group and gender (which may be inferred from information such as your name and salutation in your Apple Account), to Apple TV strategic partners, such as content owners, so that they can measure the performance of their creative work [and] meet royalty and accounting requirements.

When reached for comment, an Apple spokesperson told Ars that Apple TV users can clear their play history from the app.

All that said, the Apple TV app still shares far less data with third parties than other streaming apps. Netflix, for example, says it discloses some personal information to advertising companies “in order to select Advertisements shown on Netflix, to facilitate interaction with Advertisements, and to measure and improve effectiveness of Advertisements.”

Warner Bros. Discovery says it discloses information about Max viewers “with advertisers, ad agencies, ad networks and platforms, and other companies to provide advertising to you based on your interests.” And Disney+ users have Nielsen tracking on by default.

What if you use Siri?

You can easily deactivate Siri when setting up an Apple TV. But those who opt to keep the voice assistant and the ability to control Apple TV with their voice take somewhat of a privacy hit.

According to the privacy policy accessible in Apple TV boxes’ settings, Apple boxes automatically send all Siri requests to Apple’s servers. If you opt into using Siri data to “Improve Siri and Dictation,” Apple will store your audio data. If you opt out, audio data won’t be stored, but per the policy:

In all cases, transcripts of your interactions will be sent to Apple to process your requests and may be stored by Apple.

Apple TV boxes also send audio and transcriptions of dictation input to Apple servers for processing. Apple says it doesn’t store the audio but may store transcriptions of the audio.

If you opt to “Improve Siri and Dictation,” Apple says your history of voice requests isn’t tied to your Apple account or email. But Apple is vague about how long it may store data related to voice input performed with the Apple TV if you choose this option.

The policy states:

Your request history, which includes transcripts and any related request data, is associated with a random identifier for up to six months and is not tied to your Apple Account or email address. After six months, you request history is disassociated from the random identifier and may be retained for up to two years. Apple may use this data to develop and improve Siri, Dictation, Search, and limited other language processing functionality in Apple products …

Apple may also review a subset of the transcripts of your interactions and this … may be kept beyond two years for the ongoing improvements of products and services.

Apple promises not to use Siri and voice data to build marketing profiles or sell them to third parties, but it hasn’t always adhered to that commitment. In January, Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing Siri of recording private conversations and sharing them with third parties for targeted ads. In 2019, contractors reported hearing private conversations and recorded sex via Siri-gathered audio.

Outside of Apple, we’ve seen voice request data used questionably, including in criminal trials and by corporate employees. Siri and dictation data also represent additional ways a person’s Apple TV usage might be unexpectedly analyzed to fuel Apple’s business.

Automatic content recognition

Apple TVs aren’t preloaded with automatic content recognition (ACR), an Apple spokesperson confirmed to Ars, another plus for privacy advocates. But ACR is software, so Apple could technically add it to Apple TV boxes via a software update at some point.

Sherman Li, the founder of Enswers, the company that first put ACR in Samsung TVs, confirmed to Ars that it’s technically possible for Apple to add ACR to already-purchased Apple boxes. Years ago, Enswers retroactively added ACR to other types of streaming hardware, including Samsung and LG smart TVs. (Enswers was acquired by Gracenote, which Nielsen now owns.)

In general, though, there are challenges to adding ACR to hardware that people already own, Li explained:

Everyone believes, in theory, you can add ACR anywhere you want at any time because it’s software, but because of the way [hardware is] architected… the interplay between the chipsets, like the SoCs, and the firmware is different in a lot of situations.

Li pointed to numerous variables that could prevent ACR from being retroactively added to any type of streaming hardware, “including access to video frame buffers, audio streams, networking connectivity, security protocols, OSes, and app interface communication layers, especially at different levels of the stack in these devices, depending on the implementation.”

Due to the complexity of Apple TV boxes, Li suspects it would be difficult to add ACR to already-purchased Apple TVs. It would likely be simpler for Apple to release a new box with ACR if it ever decided to go down that route.

If Apple were to add ACR to old or new Apple TV boxes, the devices would be far less private, and the move would be highly unpopular and eliminate one of the Apple TV’s biggest draws.

However, Apple reportedly has a growing interest in advertising to streaming subscribers. The Apple TV+ streaming service doesn’t currently show commercials, but the company is rumored to be exploring a potential ad tier. The suspicions stem from a reported meeting between Apple and the United Kingdom’s ratings body, Barb, to discuss how it might track ads on Apple TV+, according to a July report from The Telegraph.

Since 2023, Apple has also hired several prominent names in advertising, including a former head of advertising at NBCUniversal and a new head of video ad sales. Further, Apple TV+ is one of the few streaming services to remain ad-free, and it’s reported to be losing Apple $1 billion per year since its launch.

One day soon, Apple may have much more reason to care about advertising in streaming and being able to track the activities of people who use its streaming offerings. That has implications for Apple TV box users.

“The more Apple creeps into the targeted ads space, the less I’ll trust them to uphold their privacy promises. You can imagine Apple TV being a natural progression for selling ads,” PIRG’s Cross said.

Somewhat ironically, Apple has marketed its approach to privacy as a positive for advertisers.

“Apple’s commitment to privacy and personal relevancy builds trust amongst readers, driving a willingness to engage with content and ads alike,” Apple’s advertising guide for buying ads on Apple News and Stocks reads.

The most private streaming gadget

It remains technologically possible for Apple to introduce intrusive tracking or ads to Apple TV boxes, but for now, the streaming devices are more private than the vast majority of alternatives, save for dumb TVs (which are incredibly hard to find these days). And if Apple follows its own policies, much of the data it gathers should be kept in-house.

However, those with strong privacy concerns should be aware that Apple does track certain tvOS activities, especially those that happen through Apple accounts, voice interaction, or the Apple TV app. And while most of Apple’s streaming hardware and software settings prioritize privacy by default, some advocates believe there’s room for improvement.

For example, STOP’s Maestro said:

Unlike in the [European Union], where the upcoming Data Act will set clearer rules on transfers of data generated by smart devices, the US has no real legislation governing what happens with your data once it reaches Apple’s servers. Users are left with little way to verify those privacy promises.

Maestro suggested that Apple could address these concerns by making it easier for people to conduct security research on smart device software. “Allowing the development of alternative or modified software that can evaluate privacy settings could also increase user trust and better uphold Apple’s public commitment to privacy,” Maestro said.

There are ways to limit the amount of data that advertisers can get from your Apple TV. But if you use the Apple TV app, Apple can use your activity to help make business decisions—and therefore money.

As you might expect from a device that connects to the Internet and lets you stream shows and movies, Apple TV boxes aren’t totally incapable of tracking you. But they’re still the best recommendation for streaming users seeking hardware with more privacy and fewer ads.

Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She’s been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.

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The making of Apple TV’s Murderbot

Apple TV Plus, culture, Entertainment, Murderbot, streaming television / Kelly Newman / May 19, 2025

Ars chats with series creators Paul and Chris Weitz about adapting Martha Wells’ book series for TV.

Built to destroy. Forced to connect. Credit: Apple TV+

In the mood for a jauntily charming sci-fi comedy dripping with wry wit and an intriguing mystery? Check out Apple TV’s Murderbot, based on Martha Wells’ bestselling series of novels The Murderbot Diaries. It stars Alexander Skarsgård as the titular Murderbot, a rogue cyborg security (SEC) unit that gains autonomy and must learn to interact with humans while hiding its new capabilities.

(Some minor spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

There are seven books in Wells’ series thus far. All are narrated by Murderbot, who is technically owned by a megacorporation but manages to hack and override its governor module. Rather than rising up and killing its former masters, Murderbot just goes about performing its security work, relieving the boredom by watching a lot of entertainment media; its favorite is a soap opera called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

Murderbot the TV series adapts the first book in the series, All Systems Red. Murderbot is on assignment on a distant planet, protecting a team of scientists who hail from a “freehold.” Mensah (Noma Dumezweni) is the team leader. The team also includes Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski) and Gurathin (David Dastmalchian), who is an augmented human plugged into the same data feeds as Murderbot (processing at a much slower rate). Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu) also serves as the team’s legal counsel; they are in a relationship with Arada (Tattiawna Jones), eventually becoming a throuple with Ratthi (Akshay Khanna).

As in the books, Murderbot is the central narrator, regaling us with his observations of the humans with their silly ways and discomfiting outbursts of emotion. Mensah and her fellow scientists were forced to rent a SEC unit to get the insurance they needed for their mission, and they opted for the cheaper, older model, unaware that it had free will. This turns out to be a good investment when Murderbot rescues Bharadwaj from being eaten by a giant alien worm monster—losing a chunk of its own torso in the process.

However, it makes a tactical error when it shows its human-like face to Ratthi, who is paralyzed by shock and terror, making small talk to get everyone back to safety. This rouses Gurathin’s suspicions, but the rest of the team can’t help but view Murderbot differently—as a sentient being rather than a killing machine—much to Murderbot’s dismay. Can it keep its free will a secret and avoid being melted down in acid while helping the scientists figure out why there are mysterious gaps in their survey maps? And will the scientists succeed in their attempts to “humanize” their SEC unit?

image of Murderbot's head with data screens superimposed over it — Murderbot figured out how to hack its “governor module.”

The task of adapting Wells’ novella for TV fell to sibling co-creators Paul Weitz (Little Fockers, Bel Canto) and Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass, Rogue One), whose shared credits include Antz, American Pie, and About A Boy. (Wells herself was a consulting producer.) They’ve kept most of the storyline intact, fleshing out characters and punching up the humor a bit, even recreating campy scenes from The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon—John Cho and Clark Gregg make cameos as the stars of that fictional show-within-a-show.

Ars caught up with Paul and Chris Weitz to learn more about the making of Murderbot.

Ars Technica: What drew you to this project?

Chris Weitz: It’s a great central character, kind of a literary character that felt really rare and strong. The fact that we both liked the books equally was a big factor as well.

Paul Weitz: The first book, All Systems Red, had a really beautiful ending. And it had a theme that personhood is irreducible. The idea that, even with this central character you think you get to know so well, you can’t reduce it to ways that you think it’s going to behave—and you shouldn’t. The idea that other people exist and that they shouldn’t be put into whatever box you want to put them into felt like something that was comforting to have in one’s pocket. If you’re going to spend so much time adapting something, it’s really great if it’s not only fun but is about something.

It was very reassuring to be working with Martha Wells on it because she was very generous with her time. The novella’s quite spare, so even though we didn’t want to cut anything, we wanted to add some things. Why is Gurathin the way that he is? Why is he so suspicious of Murderbot? What is his personal story? And with Mensah, for instance, the idea that, yes, she’s this incredibly worthy character who’s taking on all this responsibility on her shoulders, but she also has panic attacks. That’s something that’s added, but we asked Martha, “Is it OK if we make Mensah have some panic attacks?” And she’s like, “Oh, that’s interesting. I kind of like that idea.” So that made it less alarming to adapt it.

group of ethnically diverse people in space habitat uniforms gathering around a computer monitor — Murderbot’s clients: a group of scientists exploring the resources of what turns out to be a very dangerous planet. Credit: Apple TV+

Ars Technica: You do play up the humorous aspects, but there is definitely humor in the books.

Chris Weitz: A lot of great science fiction is very, very serious without much to laugh at. In Martha’s world, not only is there a psychological realism in the sense that people can have PTSD when they are involved in violence, but also people have a sense of humor and funny things happen, which is inherently what happens when people get together. I was going to say it’s a human comedy, but actually, Murderbot is not human—but still a person.

Ars Technica: Murderbot’s favorite soap opera, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, is merely mentioned in passing in the book, but you’ve fleshed it out as a show-within-the-show.

Chris Weitz: We just take our more over-the-top instincts and throw it to that. Because it’s not as though we think that Sanctuary Moon is bad.

Ars Technica: As Murderbot says, it’s quality entertainment!

Chris Weitz: It’s just a more unhinged form of storytelling. A lot of the stuff that the bot says in Sanctuary Moon is just goofy lines that we could have given to Murderbot in a situation like that. So we’re sort of delineating what the show isn’t. At the same time, it’s really fun to indulge your worst instincts, your most guilty pleasure kind of instincts. I think that was true for the actors who came to perform it as well.

Paul Weitz: Weirdly, you can state some things that you wouldn’t necessarily in a real show when DeWanda Wise’s character, who’s a navigation bot, says, “I’m a navigation unit, not a sex bot.” I’m sure there are many people who have felt like that. Also, to delineate it visually, the actors were in a gigantic stage with pre-made visuals around them, whereas most of the stuff [for Murderbot] was practical things that had been built.

Ars Technica: In your series, Murderbot is basically a Ken doll with no genitals. The book only mentioned that Murderbot has no interest in sex. But the question of what’s under the hood, so to speak, is an obvious one that one character in particular rather obsesses over.

Chris Weitz: It’s not really addressed in the book, but certainly, Murderbot, in this show as well, has absolutely no interest in romance or sex or love. This was a personable way to point it out. There was a question of, once you’ve got Alexander in this role, hasn’t anybody noticed what it looks like? And also, the sort of exploitation that bot constructs are subjected to in this world that Martha has created meant that someone was probably going to treat it like an object at some point.

Paul Weitz: I also think, both of us having kids, you get a little more exposed to ways of thinking that imply that the way that we were brought up thinking of romance and sexuality and gender is not all there is to it and that, possibly, in the future, it’s not going to be so strange, this idea that one can be either asexual or—

Chris Weitz: A-romantic. I think that Murderbot, among neurodivergent communities and a-romantic, asexual communities, it’s a character that people feel they can identify with—even people who have social anxiety like myself or people who think that human beings can be annoying, which is pretty much everyone at some point or another.

Ars Technica: It’s interesting you mentioned neurodivergence. I would hesitate to draw a direct comparison because it’s a huge spectrum, but there are elements of Murderbot that seem to echo autistic traits to some degree.

Paul Weitz: People look at something like the autism spectrum, and they inadvertently erase the individuality of people who might be on that spectrum because everybody has a very particular experience of life. Martha Wells has been quoted as saying that in writing Murderbot, she realized that there are certain aspects of herself that might be neurodivergent. So that kind of gives one license to discuss the character in a certain way.

That’s one giant and hungry worm monster. Apple TV+

Chris Weitz: I don’t think it’s a direct analogy in any way, but I can understand why people from various areas on the spectrum can identify with that.

Paul Weitz: I think one thing that one can identify with is somebody telling you that you should not be the way you are, you should be a different way, and that’s something that Murderbot doesn’t like nor do.

Ars Technica: You said earlier, it’s not human, but a person. That’s a very interesting delineation. What are your thoughts on the personhood of Murderbot?

Chris Weitz: This is the contention that you can be a person without being a human. I think we’re going to be grappling with this issue the moment that artificial general intelligence comes into being. I think that Martha, throughout the series, brings up different kinds of sentients and different kinds of personhood that aren’t standard human issue. It’s a really fascinating subject because it is our future in part, learning how to get along with intelligences that aren’t human.

Paul Weitz: There was a New York Times journalist a couple of years ago who interviewed a chatbot—

Chris Weitz: It was Kevin Roose, and it was Sydney the Chatbot. [Editor: It was an AI chatbot added to Microsoft’s Bing search engine, dubbed Sydney by Roose.]

Paul Weitz: Right. During the course of the interview, the chatbot told the journalist to leave his wife and be with it, and that he was making a terrible mistake. The emotions were so all over the place and so specific and quirky and slightly scary, but also very, very recognizable. Shortly thereafter, Microsoft shut down the ability to talk with that chatbot. But I think that somewhere in our future, general intelligences are these sort of messy emotions and weird sort of unique personalities. And it does seem like something where we should entertain the thought that, yeah, we better treat everyone as a person.

murderbot with fave revealed, standing in a corner with his head bent and leaning against the wall, back to other other people — Murderbot isn’t human, but it is a person. Credit: Apple TV+

Ars Technica: There’s this Renaissance concept called sprezzatura—essentially making a difficult thing look easy. The series is so breezy and fun, the pacing is perfect, the finale is so moving. But I know it wasn’t easy to pull that off. What were your biggest challenges in making it work?

Chris Weitz: First, can I say that that is one of my favorite words in the world, and I think about it all the time. I remember trying to express this to people I’ve been working on movies with, a sense of sprezzatura. It’s like it is the duck’s legs moving underneath the water. It was a good decision to make this a half-hour series so you didn’t have a lot of meetings about what had just happened in the show inside of the show or figuring out why things were the way they were. We didn’t have to pad things and stretch them out.

It allowed us to feel like things were sort of tossed off. You can’t toss off anything, really, in science fiction because there’s going to be special effects, visual effects. You need really good teams that can roll with moving the camera in a natural way, reacting to the way that the characters are behaving in the environment. And they can fix things.

Paul Weitz: They have your back.

Chris Weitz: Yeah. Really great, hard work on behalf of a bunch of departments to make things feel like they’re just sort of happening and we’ve got a camera on it, as opposed to being very carefully laid out.

Paul Weitz: And a lot of it is trusting people and trusting their creativity, trying to create an environment where you’ve articulated what you’re after, but you don’t think their job better than they do. You’re giving notes, but people are having a sense of playfulness and fun as they’re doing the visual effects, as they’re coming up with the graphics, as they’re acting, as they’re doing pretty much anything. And creating a good vibe on the set. Because sometimes, the stress of making something sucks some of the joy out of it. The antidote to that is really to trust your collaborators.

Ars Technica: So what was your favorite moment in the series?

Paul Weitz: I’d say the tenth episode, for me, just because it’s been a slow burn. There’s been enough work put into the characters—for instance, David Dastmalchian’s character—and we haven’t played certain cards that we could have played, so there can be emotional import without telegraphing it too much. Our ending stays true to the book, and that’s really beautiful.

Chris Weitz: I can tell you my worst moment, which is the single worst weather day I’ve ever experienced in a quarry in Ontario where we had hail, rain, snow, and wind—so much so that our big, long camera crane just couldn’t function. Some of the best moments were stuff that had nothing to do with visual effects or CGI—just moments of comedy in between the team members, that only exist within the context of the cast that we brought together.

Paul Weitz: And the fact that they loved each other so much. They’re very different people from each other, but they really did genuinely bond.

Ars Technica: I’m going to boldly hope that there’s going to be a second season because there are more novels to adapt. Are you already thinking about season two?

Paul Weitz: We’re trying not to think about that too much; we’d love it if there was.

Chris Weitz: We’re very jinxy about that kind of stuff. So we’ve thought in sort of general ways. There’s some great locations and characters that start to get introduced [in later books], like Art, who’s an AI ship. We’re likely not to make it one season per book anymore, we’d do a mashup of the material that we have available to us. We’re going to have to sit with Martha and figure out how that works if we are lucky enough to get renewed.

New episodes of Murderbot release every Friday on Apple TV+ through July 11, 2025. You should definitely be watching.

Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

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The Third Crisis dawns in Foundation S3 teaser

Apple TV Plus, culture, Entertainment, foundation, Isaac Asimov, streaming television, Trailers, TV trailers / Beth Washington / May 7, 2025

We have our first teaser for the upcoming third season of Foundation.

It’s been nearly two years, but the third season of Foundation, Apple TV+’s epic adaptation (or remix) of the Isaac Asimov series, is almost here. The streaming platform released an action-packed teaser of what we can expect from the new ten-episode season: the onset of the Third Crisis, a galactic war, and a shirtless Lee Pace.

(Some spoilers for first two seasons below.)

Showrunner David S. Goyer took great pains in S1 to carefully set up his expansive fictional world, and the scope only broadened in the second season. As previously reported, Asimov’s fundamental narrative arc remains intact, with the series taking place across multiple planets over 1,000 years and featuring a huge cast of characters.

Mathematician Hari Seldon (Jared Harris) developed a controversial theory of “psychohistory,” and his calculations predict the fall of the Empire, ushering in a Dark Age period that will last 30,000 years, after which a second Empire will emerge. The collapse of the Empire is inevitable, but Seldon has a plan to reduce the Dark Ages to a mere 1,000 years through the establishment of a Foundation to preserve all human knowledge so that civilization need not rebuild itself entirely from scratch. He is aided in this endeavor by his math prodigy protegé Gaal Dornick (Lou Llobell).

The biggest change from the books is the replacement of the Empire’s ruling committee with a trio of Eternal Emperor clones called the Cleons—a genetic triune dynasty comprised of Brother Day (Pace), Brother Dusk (Terrence Mann), and Brother Dawn (Cassian Bilton). Technically, they are all perfect incarnations of the same man at different ages, and this is both the source of their strength as a team and of their conflicts. Their guardian is an android, Eto Demerzel (Laura Birn), one of the last surviving androids from the ancient Robot Wars, who is programmed to protect the dynasty at all costs.

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Apple loses $1B a year on prestigious, minimally viewed Apple TV+: report

Apple, Apple TV Plus, streaming, Tech / Beth Washington / March 21, 2025

The Apple TV+ streaming service “is losing more than $1 billion annually,” according to The Information today.

The report also claimed that Apple TV+’s subscriber count reached “around 45 million” in 2024, citing the two anonymous sources.

Ars reached out to Apple for comment on the accuracy of The Information’s report and will update this article if we hear back.

According to one of the sources, Apple TV+ has typically spent over $5 billion annually on content since 2019, when Apple TV+ debuted. Last year, though, Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly cut the budget by about $500 million. The reported numbers are similar to a July report from Bloomberg that claimed that Apple had spent over $20 billion on Apple TV+’s library. For comparison, Netflix has 301.63 million subscribers and expects to spend $18 billion on content in 2025.

In the year preceding Apple TV+’s debut, Apple services chief Eddy Cue reportedly pushed back on executive requests to be stingier with content spending, “a person with direct knowledge of the matter” told The Information.

But Cook started paying closer attention to Apple TV+’s spending after the 2022 Oscars, where the Apple TV+ original CODA won Best Picture. The award signaled the significance of Apple TV+ as a business.

Per The Information, spending related to Apple TV+ previously included lavish perks for actors and producers. Apple paid “hundreds of thousands of dollars per flight” to transport Apple TV+ actors and producers to promotional events, The Information said, noting that such spending “is common in Hollywood” but “more unusual at Apple.” Apple’s finance department reportedly pushed Apple TV+ executives to find better flight deals sometime around 2023.

In 2024, Cook questioned big-budget Apple TV+ films, like the $200 million Argylle, which he said failed to generate impressive subscriber boosts or viewership, an anonymous “former Apple TV+ employee” shared. Cook reportedly cut about $500 million from the Apple TV+ content budget in 2024.

Apple loses $1B a year on prestigious, minimally viewed Apple TV+: report Read More »

Innie rebellion is brewing in trippy Severance S2 trailer

Apple TV Plus, culture, Entertainment, severance, streaming television, Trailers, TV trailers, Uncategorized / Shannon Garcia / December 8, 2024

Severance returns to Apple TV in January for its sophomore season.

Severance was one of the most talked-about TV series of 2022, receiving widespread critical acclaim. We loved the series so much that Ars staffers actually wrote a group review so that everyone could weigh in with their thoughts on the first season, pronouncing it “one of the best shows on TV.” Needless to say, we have been eagerly awaiting the second season next month. Prime Video just released the official trailer at CCXP24 in São Paulo, Brazil and it does not disappoint.

(Spoilers for first season below.)

In the world of Severance, people can completely disconnect their work and personal lives. Thanks to a new procedure developed by Lumon Industries, workers can bifurcate themselves into “innies” (work selves) and “outies” (personal selves)—with no sharing of memories between them. This appeals to people like Mark (Adam Scott), who lost his wife in a car crash and has struggled to work through the grief. Why not forget all that pain for eight hours a day?

It’s no spoiler to say that things went… badly in S1 as a result of this process. As Ars Deputy Editor Nate Anderson noted at the time, “The show isn’t just bonkers—though it is that, too. It’s also about the lengths to which we will go to dull or avoid emotional pain, and the ways in which humans will reach out to connect with others even under the most unpromising of circumstances.” In the process, Severance brought out “the latent horror of fluorescent lights, baby goats, cubicles, waffles, middle managers, finger traps, and ‘work/life balance.’ Also cults. And vending machines. Plus corporate training manuals. And talk therapy. Oh, and ‘kind eyes.'”

The first season ended on quite the cliffhanger, with several Lumon employees activating an “overtime contingency” to escape the office confines to get a taste for how their “outies” live—and some pretty startling secrets were revealed. S2 will naturally grapple with the fallout from their brief mutiny. Per the official premise:

Innie rebellion is brewing in trippy Severance S2 trailer Read More »

Apple TV+ spent $20B on original content. If only people actually watched.

Apple, Apple TV Plus, streaming, Tech / Kelly Newman / November 19, 2024

For example, Apple TV+ is embracing bundles, which is thought to help prevent subscribers from canceling streaming subscriptions. People can currently get Apple TV+ from a Comcast streaming bundle.

And as of last month people can subscribe to and view Apple TV+ through Amazon Prime Video. As my colleague Samuel Axon explained in October, this contradicts Apple’s long-standing approach to streaming “because Apple has long held ambitions of doing exactly what Amazon is doing here: establishing itself as the central library, viewing, search, and payment hub for a variety of subscription offerings.” But without support from Netflix, “Apple’s attempt to make the TV app a universal hub of content has been continually stymied,” Axon noted.

Something has got to give

With the broader streaming industry dealing with high production costs, disappointed subscribers, and growing competition, Apple, like many stakeholders, is looking for new approaches to entertainment. For Apple, that also reportedly includes fewer theatrical releases.

It may also one day mean joining what some streaming subscribers see as the dark side of streaming: advertisements. Apple TV+ currently remains ad-free, but there are suspicions that this could change, with Apple reportedly meeting with the United Kingdom’s TV ratings body recently about ad tracking and its hiring of ad executives.

Apple’s ad-free platform and comparatively low subscription prices are some of the biggest draws for Apple TV+ subscribers, however, which would make changes to either benefit controversial.

But after five years on the market and a reported $20 billion in spending, Apple can’t be happy with 0.3 percent of available streaming viewership. Awards and prestige help put Apple TV+ on the map, but Apple needs more subscribers and eyeballs on its expensive content to have a truly successful streaming business.

Apple TV+ spent $20B on original content. If only people actually watched. Read More »

Silo S2 expands its dystopian world

Apple TV Plus, culture, Entertainment, Silo, streaming television / Mike M. / November 16, 2024

Ars chats with cinematographer Baz Irvine about creating a fresh look for the sophomore season.

Credit: YouTube/Apple TV+

The second season of Silo, Apple TV’s dystopian sc-fi drama, is off to a powerful start with yesterday’s premiere. Based on the trilogy by novelist Hugh Howey, was one of the more refreshing surprises on streaming television in 2023: a twist-filled combination of political thriller and police procedural set in a post-apocalyptic world. It looks like S2 will be leaning more heavily into sci-fi thriller territory, expanding its storytelling—and its striking cinematography—beyond the original silo.

(Spoilers for S1 below as well as first five minutes of S2 premiere.)

As previously reported, Silo is set in a self-sustaining underground city inhabited by a community whose recorded history only goes back 140 years, generations after the silo was built by the founders. Outside is a toxic hellscape that is only visible on big screens in the silo’s topmost level. Inside, 10,000 people live together under a pact: Anyone who says they want to “go out” is immediately granted that wish—cast outside in an environment suit on a one-way trip to clean the cameras. But those who make that choice inevitably die soon after because of the toxic environment.

Mechanical keeps the power on and life support from collapsing, and that is where we met mechanical savant Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) at one with the giant geothermal generator that spins in the silo’s core. There were hints at what came before—relics like mechanical wristwatches or electronics far beyond the technical means of the silo’s current inhabitants, due to a rebellion 140 years ago that destroyed the silo’s records in the process. The few computers are managed by the IT department, run by Bernard Holland (Tim Robbins).

Over the course of the first season, Juliette reluctantly became sheriff and investigated the murder of her lover, George (Ferdinand Kingsley), who collected forbidden historical artifacts, as well as the murder of silo mayor Ruth Jahns (Geraldine James). Many twists ensued, including the existence of a secret group dedicated to remembering the past whose members were being systemically killed. Juliette also began to suspect that the desolate landscape seen through the silo’s camera system was a lie and there was actually a lush green landscape outside.

In the season one finale, Juliette made a deal with Holland: She would choose to go outside in exchange for the truth about what happened to George and the continued safety of her friends in Mechanical. The final twist: Juliette survived her outside excursion and realized that the dystopian hellscape was the reality, and the lush green Eden was the lie. And she learned that their silo was one of many, with a ruined city visible in the background.

That’s where the second season picks up. Apple TV+ released the footage of the first five minutes last week:

Official sneak peek for the second season of Apple TV+’s sci-fi drama Silo.

The opening battle, with all new characters, clearly took place in one of the other silos (Silo 17), and the residents desperate to break out did so only to meet their deaths. The footage ends with Juliette walking past their skeletons toward the entrance to Silo 17. We know from the official trailer that rebellion is also brewing back in her own silo as rumors spread that she is alive.

The expansion of Silo‘s world was an opportunity for cinematographer Baz Irvine (who worked on four key episodes this season) to play with lenses, color palettes, lighting, and other elements to bring unique looks to the different settings.

Ars Technica: How did you make things visually different from last season? What were your guidelines going into this for the cinematography?

Baz Irvine: There’s few different things going on. I love season one, but we were going to open it up [in S2]. We were going to introduce this new silo, so that was going to be a whole other world that had to look immediately familiar, but also completely different. We start season one with an exterior of the dystopian, future blasted planet. On the technical point, I saw two things I could do very simply. I felt that the format of season one was two to one, so not quite letterbox, not quite widescreen. When I saw the sets and I saw the art, everything the amazing art department had done, I was like, guys, this needs to be widescreen. I think at the time there was still a little bit of reticence from Apple and a few of the other streamers to commit to full widescreen, but I persuaded them.

I also changed the lenses because I wanted to keep the retro feel, the dystopian future, but retro feel. I chose slightly different lenses to give me a wider feel of view. I talked to my director, Michael Dinner, and we talked about how at times, as brilliant as season one was, it was a bit theatrical, a bit presentational. Here’s the silo, here’s the silo, here’s the silo…., So what you want to do is stop worrying about the silo. It is incredible and it’s in the back of every shot. We wanted to make it more visceral. There was going to be a lot more action. The start of episode one is a full-blown battle. Apple released the first five minutes on Apple. It actually stops at a very critical point, but you can see that it’s the previous world of the other Silo 17.

We still wanted to see the scope and the scale. As a cinematographer, you’ve got to get your head around something that’s very unusual: the Silo is vertical. When we shoot stuff, we go outside, everything’s horizontal. So as a cinematographer, you think horizontally, you frame the skyline, you frame the buildings. But in the silo, it’s all up there and it’s all down there, but it doesn’t exist. A bit of the set exists, but you have to go, oh, okay, what can I see if I point the camera up here, what will VFX brilliantly give me? What can I see down there? So that was another big discussion.

Ars Technica: When you talk about wanting to make it more visceral, what does that mean specifically in a cinematography context?

Baz Irvine: It’s just such a lovely word. Season one had an almost European aesthetic. It was a lot of very beautiful, slow developing shots. Of course it was world building. It was the first time the silo was on the screen. So as a filmmaker, you have a certain responsibility to give the audience a sense of where you are. Season two, we know where we are. Well, we don’t with the other silo, but we discover it. This role for me meant not being head of the action. So with Juliet, Rebecca Ferguson’s character, we discover what she sees with her, rather than showing it ahead of time.We’re trying to be a point of view, almost hand-held. When she’s running, we’re running with her. When she’s trying to smash her helmet, we are very much with her.

On another level, visceral for me also means responding to action—not being too prescriptive about what the camera should do, but when you see the blocking of a scene and you feel it’s going a certain way and there’s a certain energy, responding to that and getting in there. The silo, as I said, is always going to be in the background, but we’re not trying to fetishize the silo too much. We’re going to look down, we’re going to look up, we’re going to use crane moves, but just get in with the action. Just be with the people. That means slightly longer lenses, longer focal lengths at times. And from my point of view, the fall off and focus just looks so beautiful. So I think that’s what visceral means. I bet you somebody else would say something completely different.

Ars Technica: Other specific choices you made included using a muted green palette and torchlight flashlight. So there is this sense of isolation and mystery and a spooky, more immersive atmosphere.

Baz Irvine: The challenge that I could see from when I read the script is that a large part of season two is in the new Silo 17. So the new Silo 17 hasn’t been occupied for 35 years. It’s been in this dormant, strange, half-lit state. It’s overgrown with plants and ivy. Some of the references for that were what Chernobyl looked like 20 years down the line. When humanity leaves, nature just takes over. But as a counterpoint, we needed it to feel dark. Most of the electricity has gone, most of the lights have gone out. I needed to have some lighting motivation to give some sense of the shape of the Silo, so that we weren’t plummeting into darkness for the whole episode. So I came up with this idea, the overhead lights that power the silo, that light the silo, were in broken -down mode. They were in reserve power. They’d gone a bit green because that’s what the bulb technology would’ve done.

Part of the reason to do that is that when you’re cutting between two silos that were built identically, you’ve got to have something to show that you’re in a different world. Yes, it’s empty, and yes, it’s desolate and it’s eerie, and there’s strange clanking noises. But I wanted to make it very clear from a lighting point of view that they were two different places.

The other thing that you will discover in episode one, when Juliet’s character is finally working her way through the Silo 17, she has a flashlight and she breaks into an apartment. As she scans the wallshe starts to notice, oh, it’s not like her silo, there are beautiful murals and art. We really wanted to play into this idea that every silo was different. They had different groups of people potentially from different parts of the states. This silo in a way developed quite an artistic community. Murals and frescoes were very much part of this silo. It’s not something that is obvious, and it’s just the odd little scan of a flashlight that gives you this sense. But also Silo 17 is scary. It’s sort of alive, but is there life in it? That is a big question.

Ars Technica: You talk about not wanting to all be in darkness. I’m now thinking of that infamous Game of Thrones episode where the night battle footage was so dark viewers couldn’t follow what was going on. That’s clearly a big challenge for a cinematographer. Where do you find the balance?

Baz Irvine: This is the eternal dilemma for cinematographers. It’s getting notes back from the grownups going, it’s too dark,it’s too dark. Well, maybe if you were watching it in a dark room and it wasn’t bight outside, it would be fine. You have to balance things. I’ve also got Rebecca Ferguson walking around the silo, and it can’t be in so much shadow that you can’t recognize her. So there’s a type of darkness that in film world I know how to convey it. It’s very subtle. It is underexposed, but I used very soft top light. I didn’t want hard shadows. By using that light and filling in little details in the background, I can then take the lighting down. I had an amazing colorist in Company 3 in Toronto and we had a chat about how dark we could go.

We have to be very dark in places because a couple of times in this season, the electricity gets pulled altogether in the old silo as well. You can’t pull the plug and then suddenly everybody’s visible. But it is a film aesthetic that, as a cinematographer, you just learn, how dark can I go? When am I going to get in trouble? Please can I stay on the job, but make it as dark as possible? You mentioned Game of Thrones, clearly audiences have become more used to seeing imagery that I would consider more photographic, more bold generally. I try to tap into that as much as possible. If you have one character with a flashlight, then suddenly that changes everything because you point a flashlight at the surface and the light bounces back in the face. You have to use all the tools that you can.

Ars Technica: In season one there were different looks (lighting and textures) for different social hierarchies of the social hierarchies. Does that continue in season two?

Baz Irvine: I tried to push that a little bit more in season two. I loved the idea of that J.G. Ballard high rise, the rich at the top, everything inverted. The silo is crazy tall. We worked it out. It’s about a kilometer and a half.

The mechanical is the fun bit because mechanical is the bottom of the silo. Down there, we wet the walls, wet the floors, so that the more greeny, orangey colors you associate with fluorescent lights and more mechanical fixtures would reflect. You keep the light levels low because you get this lovely sheen off the walls. As you move up through the middle, where a lot of the action takes place, the lighting is more normal. I’m not really trying to push it one way or another.

Then you go up top where the judicial live, where the money and power is. You’re a lot closer to the light source because there only is this one huge light source that lights down in the silo. So up there the air is more rarefied. It’s like you’re on top of a Swiss mountain. It just feels cleaner. There’s less atmosphere, slightly bluer in light, different color temperatures on the practical lighting in offices. It’s less chaotic, more like a more modern aesthetic up there. You’ve got to be careful not to overplay it. Once you establish colors, you run with it and it just becomes second nature. It was a lot of fun to be able to demarcate—ss long as you remembered where you were, that was always the trick.

Ars Technica: What were the most notable challenges and highlights for you—without giving away anything beyond episode one.

Baz Irvine: I think the big thing about episode one is that it’s like a silent movie. Rebecca Ferguson has maybe two lines, or maybe she doesn’t actually say anything. It’s a journey of discovery, and there’s some quite scary, terrifying things that happen. There’s a lot of action. Also, we find out there’s water in Silo 17. Silo 17 is flooded. You don’t find that out until she slips and falls and you think she’s fallen to her death. From the outset knew that there would be an extensive amount of underwater, or on the surface of the water, filming that would need to take place. We had to do a massive amount of testing, looking at textures of water, what equipment we could use, how we could get the depth, the width. We built a huge tank at one of our studios in London and used Pinewood’s famous underwater tank for the fall.

Also there was the challenge of trying to do shots of that scale outside because we actually built sets. We could probably see 50 feet beyond Rebecca. We had the surface of the scorched surface, but beyond that is VFX. So we had huge blue screens and all these different cranes and things called Manitous with massive frames and had to control the sun. That was very challenging. You can really go down a very cliched path when trying to imagine what the fallout of a massive nuclear attack would look like. But we didn’t want to overplay it too much, we wanted to embed it in some sort of reality so that you didn’t suddenly feel at the start of episode one, oh my, you’re on the surface of Mars. It had to feel real, but also just completely different from the interior world of the silo.

Ars Technica: I assume that there’s a lot more exciting stuff coming in the other episodes that we can’t talk about.

Baz Irvine: There is so much exciting stuff. There’s a lot of action. The silo cafeteria, by the way, is just incredible because you have this huge screen. When I turned up, I was thinking, okay, well this is clearly going to be some big VFX blue screen. It is not. It is a projected image. The work that they did to make it feel like it was a camera mounted to the top of the silo, showing the world outside, and the different times of day—we just literally dialed in. Can I have dusk please? Can I have late afternoon with a little bit of cloud? It was such a fun toy box to play with.

New episodes of Silo S2 will premiere every Friday through January 17, 2025, on Apple TV+.

Jennifer is a senior reporter at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

Silo S2 expands its dystopian world Read More »

Rebellion brews underground in Silo S2 trailer

Apple TV Plus, culture, Entertainment, Rebecca Ferguson, Silo, streaming television / 9u50fv / October 14, 2024

Where we left off

The first season opened with the murder of Juliette’s lover, George (Ferdinand Kingsley), who collected forbidden historical artifacts, which silo sheriff Holston Becker (David Oyelowo) investigated at Juliette’s request. When he chose to go outside, he named Juliette as his successor, and she took on George’s case as well as the murder of silo mayor Ruth Jahns (Geraldine James). Many twists ensued, including the existence of a secret group dedicated to remembering the past whose members were being systemically killed. Juliette also began to suspect that the desolate landscape seen through the silo’s camera system was a lie and there was actually a lush green landscape outside.

In the season finale, Juliette made a deal with Holland: She would choose to go outside in exchange for the truth about what happened to George and the continued safety of her friends in Mechanical. The final twist: Juliette survived her outside excursion and realized that the dystopian hellscape was the reality, and the lush green Eden was the lie. And she learned that their silo was one of many, with a ruined city visible in the background.

The official S2 trailer picks up there but doesn’t provide many additional details. We see Juliette in her protective suit walking across the desolate terrain toward the other silos, human skulls and bones crunching under her feet. When Juliette’s oxygen runs out, she finds shelter and survives, and we later see her trying to enter a silo—whether it’s her original home or another one is unclear. Meanwhile, Holland gives an impassioned speech to his silo residents, declaring her a hero for sacrificing herself. But rumors swirl that she is alive, and rebellion is clearly brewing, with Juliette becoming a symbol for the movement.

The second season of Silo debuts on Apple TV+ on November 15, 2024. Ferguson has said that there are plans for third and fourth seasons to wrap up the story, which will hopefully be filmed at the same time.

Rebellion brews underground in Silo S2 trailer Read More »

Brad Pitt stages a Formula One racing comeback in first teaser for F1

Apple TV Plus, Brad Pitt, culture, Entertainment, F1, film, film trailers, Formula 1, Warner Bros. / DJ Henderson / July 8, 2024

Vroom, vroom —

Pitt: “You’ve never seen speed, you’ve never seen just the G forces like this.”

Jennifer Ouellette – Jul 8, 2024 2: 11 pm UTC

Brad Pitt and Damson Idris co-star in F1, coming to theaters next summer.

Can a washed-up Formula One driver come out of retirement to mentor a young rookie into a champion? That’s the basic premise for F1, a forthcoming film starring Brad Pitt and directed by Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy, Top Gun: Maverick). Warner Bros. dropped the first teaser for the film yesterday, right before the 2024 British Grand Prix.

Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a fictional Formula One driver who crashed horribly in the 1990s and retired from the sport. Then his longtime friend Ruben (Javier Bardem), owner of the fictional team APXGP, approaches him about coming out of retirement to mentor his team’s rookie prodigy, Joshua “Noah” Pearce (Damson Idris). “They’re a last place team, they’re 21-22 on the grid, they’ve never scored a point,” Pitt told Sky Sports last year. “But they have a young phenom (Idris) and they bring me in as kind of a Hail Mary and hijinks ensue.”

In addition to Pitt, Bardem, and Idris, the cast includes Kerry Condon as Kate; Tobias Menzies as Banning; Kim Bodnia as Kaspar; Shea Wigham as Chip Hart; Joseph Balderrama as Rica Fazio; Sarah Niles as Noah’s mother, Bernadette; Samson Kayo as Cashman; Callie Cooke as Jodie; and Layne Harper as Press.

Brad Pitt plays mentor to Damson Idris’ hotshot rookie driver.

Warner Bros/Apple TV+
This film is really about the cars.

YouTube/Warner Bros.
Racing footage was shot on location during the regular F1 season.

YouTube/Warner Bros.
Ready for its closeup.

YouTube/Warner Bros
In the driver’s seat.

YouTube/Warner Bros.

Playing themselves in the film: seven-time Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, Carlos Sainz Jr., Sergio Perez, Benoit Treluyer, and the rest of the F1 drivers and team members. Hamilton is a co-producer on the film and was also involved during the script-writing process to keep the film as realistic as possible by drawing on his own experiences. “We want everyone to love it and to really feel that we can encapsulate what the essence of this sport is about,” Hamilton said last year.

We don’t get much dialogue in this first teaser, or much information about the plot. Honestly? The teaser comes off as a bit cheesy from a marketing standpoint. (Since when do people in the racing community scoff so dismissively at safety concerns?) But that’s all real racing footage shot on actual tracks during bona fide F1 Grand Prix weekends. Pitt himself raced an adapted F2 car between practice sessions around the Northamptonshire circuit.

“There are cameras mounted all over the car,” Pitt told Sky Sports during filming at the 2023 British Grand Prix. “You’ve never seen speed; you’ve never seen just the G forces like this.” Based on the teaser, the visual efforts to immerse audiences in the F1 experience paid off. This is a film you’ll probably want to see in IMAX.

F1 arrives in theaters in the summer of 2025 and will stream on Apple TV+ sometime after that. It’s the sixth film from Apple Original Films to snag theater distribution, following in the footsteps of Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated Killers of the Flower Moon and this weekend’s Fly Me to the Moon, among others.

Listing image by Warner Bros/Apple TV+

Brad Pitt stages a Formula One racing comeback in first teaser for F1 Read More »

Comcast’s streaming bundle is $15/month for Netflix, Peacock, Apple TV+, and ads

Apple TV Plus, Comcast, netflix, peacock, Tech / DJ Henderson / May 21, 2024

Triple play (with ads) —

It’s $25 or $10 cheaper than separate subs, but note the plans you’re getting.

Kevin Purdy – May 21, 2024 6: 31 pm UTC

Xfinity log on a tablet, with fossil rocks, glasses, and a notepad on the desk beside it. — Enlarge / Comcast/Xfinity’s new bundle of streaming services harkens back to a much earlier era.

Getty Images

Disaggregation is so 2010s, so Comcast, facing intense pressure from streaming services, is bringing back the old bundle-it-up playbook. Its previously announced bundle of Netflix, Peacock, and Apple TV+, only to Comcast/Xfinity cable or broadband subscribers, will cost $15 per month. It’s a big discount on paper, but the fine print needs reading.

The “StreamSaver” bundle is considered a “companion to broadband,” Comcast’s CEO David Watson said at a conference today, according to Reuters. It cuts more than 30 percent off the separate price of certain tiers of each service and can be bundled with Comcast’s own “NOW TV,” which has 40 other cable channels streaming. The service is due out May 29 in the US.

Take note that Comcast’s bundle gives you Netflix’s “Standard with ads” plan (which also locks you in at “Full HD” resolution and two devices), Peacock’s “Premium” (which also has ads), and Apple TV+, which has made some recent moves toward an advertising infusion. The things that people liked about streaming—being able to pick and choose TV and movie catalogs, pay to avoid advertisements, and not be beholden to their cable company for entertainment—are effectively countered by StreamSaver. The lines get blurrier, and the prices go up.

If you were already set on paying for the cheapest versions of each service and don’t mind not being able to cancel any one of them once you’re tired of it, $15 is indeed a savings. Doing the math earlier this month, Ars’ Scharon Harding totaled up all three networks at $39.47 per month with no advertising, or $24.97 per month with ads.

Tacking streaming services onto your Comcast subscription would help the company out, as would signing up, especially for StreamSaver. Comcast lost nearly 500,000 cable TV subscribers in Q1 2024, down to 13.6 million subscribers, compared to 16.1 million at the end of 2022. Peacock, the streaming service it owns, has not made money since its 2020 launch and lost $2.7 billion in 2023.

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Cable TV providers ruined cable—now they’re coming for streaming

Apple TV Plus, cable, Comcast, netflix, peacock, streaming, Tech / DJ Henderson / May 15, 2024

Cable 2.0 —

Comcast wants to tie its cable/Internet to your streaming subscriptions.

Scharon Harding – May 15, 2024 5: 21 pm UTC

In an ironic twist, cable TV and Internet provider Comcast has announced that it, too, will sell a bundle of video-streaming services for a discounted price. The announcement comes as Comcast has been rapidly losing cable TV subscribers to streaming services and seeks to bring the same type of bundling that originally drew people away from cable to streaming.

Starting on an unspecified date this month, the bundle, called Streamsaver, will offer Peacock, which Comcast owns, Apple TV+, and Netflix to people who subscribe to Comcast’s cable TV and/or broadband. Comcast already offers Netflix or Apple TV+ as add-ons to its cable TV, but Streamsaver expands Comcast’s streaming-related bundling efforts.

Comcast didn’t say how much the streaming bundle would cost, but CEO Brian Roberts said that it will “come at a vastly reduced price to anything in the market today” when announcing the bundle on Tuesday at MoffettNathanson’s 2024 Media, Internet and Communications Conference in New York, per Variety. If we factor in Peacock’s upcoming price hike, subscribing to Apple TV+, Netflix, and Peacock separately would cost $39.47 per month without ads, or $24.97/month with ads.

According to Roberts, Comcast is hoping that the upcoming package will help Comcast “add value to consumers” and “take some of the dollars out of” other streaming businesses.

For subscribers, the more immediate effect is the continuing and rapid blurring of the lines between cable and streaming services. And Comcast knows that.

As Roberts notes: “We’ve been bundling video successfully and creatively for 60 years, and so this is the latest iteration of that.”

Comcast is hemorrhaging subscribers

Last month, Comcast said it lost 487,000 cable TV subscribers in Q1 2024. It ended the quarter with 13,600,000 subscribers, compared to 14,106,000 at the end of 2023 and 16,142,000 at the end of 2022.

Comcast’s broadband subscriber base also decreased from 32,253,000 at the end of 2023 to 32,188,000.

Peacock, Comcast’s flagship streaming service, hasn’t made any money since launching in 2020 and lost $2.7 billion in 2023. However, in April, Comcast said that Peacock’s Q1 losses lessened from $704 million in Q1 2023 to $639 million in Q1 2024.

It’s worth noting that in January, Comcast raised prices for its cable and Internet services by 3 percent, blaming the price hikes on broadband investments and an increase in programming costs.

Déjà vu

One of the common reasons people abandoned cable TV were bundled packages that forced people to pay for services, like phone or Internet, or channels that they didn’t want. Now, Comcast is looking to save its shrinking subscriber base by bundling its cable TV or Internet service with some of its biggest competitors. Like streaming services, Comcast is hoping that bundling its products will deter people from canceling their subscriptions since they’re tied to each other.

Subscriber churn is also a problem in the streaming industry. Antenna, a subscription analyst company, estimates that around 25 percent of video-streaming subscribers in the US have canceled at least three such subscriptions in the last two years. These high-churn subscribers represent around 40 percent of new subscriptions and cancellations last year, Antenna told The New York Times in April.

But Comcast’s announcement hints at déjà vu as Comcast blatantly seeks to re-create the cable bundle or triple-play package using the very streaming services that are eating away at Comcast’s cable business. Ironically, Comcast is seeking to bandage a declining business by feeding some of the biggest contributors to that decline, using the same tactics that drove many customers away in the first place.

We’re expected to hear a lot more about bundled services. Last month, we learned that a Disney+, Hulu, and Max bundle would be released this summer, for example. And there’s already a lengthy list of streaming bundle packages available from third parties like Verizon and T-Mobile.

But for people who left cable to avoid overloaded bundled packages and to get away from companies like Comcast, which group cable TV or Internet with streaming services that often raise prices, limit show and movie availability and features, and increasingly focus on ads, it just isn’t worth the monthly savings.

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