How Apple TV Won Over Hollywood, With Eddy Cue & Jerry Bruckheimer

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Jerry Bruckheimer and Eddy Cue posing together with the Cannes Lions award

While speaking to Apple's Senior VP of Services Eddy Cue and F1 producer Jerry Bruckheimer, I glimpsed the secret to Apple TV's fast success.

Published Jun 26, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT

Alex is the Senior Editor of Reviews & Prestige Content, overseeing ScreenRant's film reviews as one of its Rotten Tomatoes-approved critics. After graduating from Brown University with a B.A. in English, he spent a locked-down year in Scotland completing a Master's in Film Studies from the University of Edinburgh, which he hears is a nice, lively city. He now lives in and works from Milan, Italy, conveniently a short train ride from the Venice Film Festival, which he first covered for SR in 2024.

Apple TV has come a long way in a short time. When the streaming service began in 2019, it faced the uphill battle of breaking into an ever-crowded landscape without a library of pre-existing content. Seven years later, that commitment to original programming attracts A-list talent, earns steady critical praise, and regularly puts Apple in contention for the year's biggest awards. The tech giant no longer feels like a Hollywood interloper.

In recognition of this achievement, Eddy Cue, Apple's Senior VP of Services who has overseen Apple TV since its inception, was named Entertainment Person of the Year at this year's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. I attended the event for ScreenRant and sat down with both Cue and legendary producer Jerry Bruckheimer, his collaborator on last year's runaway hit F1: The Movie. While there, I believe I glimpsed what it is that Bruckheimer, along with the rest of Hollywood's creative community, sees in Cue that has helped take Apple TV from an outsider's risky venture to a reliable partner in under a decade.

After Making F1 With Eddy Cue, Jerry Bruckheimer Is All In On Apple

Jerry Bruckheimer and Eddy Cue seated on stage for their Cannes Lions Fireside Chat

There was an easy logic to Jerry Bruckheimer's presence at this event, I thought. Cue's new honor still falls under the lasting halo of F1, which overcame pre-release handwringing over its reported budget to become the highest-grossing sports movie ever, as well as the all-time box office highs for both Apple and star Brad Pitt. That wave of success carried the film to two wins at this year's Academy Awards, which makes Bruckheimer a great representative of what Cue's team have been able to accomplish in the industry.

However, while listening to the two essentially interview each other at a Cannes Lions Fireside Chat prior to meeting them, I realized there's more to it than that. Or, rather, less. Cue and Bruckheimer talked to each other less like respectful business partners and more like friends. The dynamic between them was easy and warm. Cue seemed eager to put the spotlight on Bruckheimer whenever he could, only for Bruckheimer to send it right back. He was here, it appeared, because he was genuinely happy to not only see Cue celebrated, but be a part of it.

Speaking with them confirmed my suspicions almost right away. When I asked Cue whether, given his long tenure at Apple in different arenas, he actually felt like an 'entertainment person,' Bruckheimer was quick to answer for him. "I'll answer that. He's always been an entertainment person. He's got that personality. He's got it. He really does." (Cue, for his part, agreed.)

"If you'd have said they're not a tech company, I would have believed you..."

When describing his experience working with Apple on F1, the producer was similarly laudatory:

They were a big part of helping us make that movie, in the storytelling, and the casting, and every part of how you make a movie. They were our partners, and valued input and ideas throughout the entire process. And when it came to marketing the movie, you're not going to get a better marketing firm than Apple. I mean, they lean the whole company into promoting this movie, and that's not easy, because they all have a job to do and it's not promoting movies. That's not what they do. They're a tech company. But they really [did], thanks to Eddy and the weight he put behind it to make a success.

We dealt with them like you deal with any... if I was working with Warner Brothers, or I was working with any other studio, it was identical. Better!

Clearly, Bruckheimer came away from F1 thinking highly of Apple, and of Cue personally. He's eager to continue the relationship: He has both an untitled sequel to F1 and a UAP/UFO-centered film from director Joseph Kosinski in active development there. "F1, I think we're just about to start a script shortly. Just negotiating with the writers' representatives. And we have a script that they're going to get very shortly, first draft, on our UFO project."

"For us, two things," Cue added to that update. "I mean, one, it's incredible for our team that Jerry and Kosinski, Joe, want to work with us again. That's a sign to us that they really loved working with us. Talk about pinching yourself there! So, that's amazing. And then this UAP project is... All of us have been reading about or seeing this stuff over [our] whole life. But you don't really know a lot of what's really true, what's not true, and they're going to tell this incredible story that I think is going to blow people's minds."

Over the course of our conversation, I started to understand what it was about Cue that endeared him to creatives like Bruckheimer and Kosinski and keeps them coming back. It helped that, in asking what I thought was a natural question, I inadvertently struck a nerve.

Apple TV Is A Story-First Streamer – Eddy Cue Says That's Just The Apple Way

Jerry Bruckheimer and Eddy Cue together in front of a Cannes Lions neon sign

Bruckheimer has worked in movies for decades, and in just the last few years, he's experienced the industry's growing shift to streaming firsthand. He made 2022's Secret Headquarters for Paramount+; 2024's Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F for Netflix and Young Woman and the Sea (originally, before test screenings scored it a limited theatrical release) for Disney+; and, of course, worked with Apple on F1. I was curious if he saw any connection between his recent experience with streamers and Brad Pitt's veteran, instinctive driver entering the data-driven, tech-heavy world of Formula 1.

He didn't quite understand my question – perhaps, I considered in retrospect, because the premise truly didn't compute with his experience of Apple – but Cue did. And he didn't love it.

"That's not us." He interjected before I could finish my second attempt at asking it, a touch of offense in his tone. "We're not a data-driven... This is about telling stories, and there's no data in my mind about that. I wish it was that easy. For us, this is about telling great stories and that isn't data-driven. Fortunately, I think, in some ways, because if it was data-driven, then some of these things would never have gotten created, because they're [so] hard to imagine that you can't get there.

"And look, obviously we love bringing technology in, [like] putting the cameras in the [F1] cars, because that enhanced the storytelling. One of the coolest things is when you watch that movie, it's the closest thing that you can get to being a driver, because of the way the camera was there. Nobody had ever seen what that was like. And so, when we can do that, that's great as well. But it's got to be all about the story."

Bruckheimer backed up this account of Apple's approach ("If you'd have said they're not a tech company, I would have believed you, let's put it that way"), but I was intrigued by the way Cue said "data" like a dirty word. I pressed him on whether such technical problem-solving always followed the story, or whether story sometimes emerged from the desire to push the tech – itself an entirely valid way to approach the creative process. Not only did he insist on the former, but he believes the philosophy dates back much further than Apple TV.

We're not looking for stories or projects that can enhance or be about our technology. Our technologies... We've always, from the start of Apple – I've been there a long time, 38 years – always [been] about how we could use our technology for creatives to really do the job that they do in a much better way, easier [way], empower them to do great things. And so that's how we use the technology, and that's how we use it here [at Apple TV].

The Eddy Cue Trait That (Probably) Won Over Hollywood

Brad Pitt looking off into the distance in his racing gear in F1

I caught another glimpse at how Cue and his team do things when I asked about Apple's approach to theatrical releases, and when in the process of making a film do they decide whether something is right for that platform. The short answer is that it varies, and according to Cue, that's absolutely how it should be.

"I don't want to make any fast or hard rules. I think that's a mistake," Cue said. "I don't know why we need to make rules. I think everybody gets fixated on everything has to be a certain way.

"We were just talking about the movie, right?" The further he got into this memory, the more animated he became. "When we were doing F1, and I remember, I didn't have a lot of knowledge of theatrical movies and the amount of time [they stay in theaters]. And it was like, 'Oh, they're going to be there for 45 days, and that's the time that they go.' And the ticket sales were great. People wanted to continue seeing the movie in theaters, right? It's an incredible experience to see F1 in the theater.

"And then the time was kind of running out, and it was like, 'Well, now we're going to take it out.' I'm like, 'What do you mean we're going to take it out? Why would we take it out?' But it was just kind of, that's the process. It comes out, or whatever. Well, no, that's not the process! The process should be we take it out when the people have already seen it, and then it makes sense to take out. But if they want to keep seeing it, let's keep giving it to them."

"I don't want to make any fast or hard rules. I think that's a mistake."

I said that made perfect sense to me, and he gestured to me as if to say he couldn't believe it wasn't obvious to everyone. "But that's when you get... too fixated on rules, or this is the way we do things. It's like, why?"

He acknowledged that Apple TV being such a young venture might make them less attached to these industry norms, and therefore more likely to question them. But he also believes "it's in the DNA of our company. That's why I said we're not just completely, 100% data-driven... We need to react and make sure we understand the moment and do the right thing at that moment."

As much as the general culture at Apple may indeed be a factor, I don't think Cue gives himself enough credit. Even from my relatively brief time speaking to him, it seemed to me that he possessed a unique ability to talk sense, in a direct, clarifying way. (For an industry famously accustomed to massaging egos, surely a refreshing trait.) It's why I was inclined to believe him when he said Apple TV puts story first. I'd imagine it's why the entertainment community, Jerry Bruckheimer included, were able to recognize him as one of their own.