Reese Witherspoon is staying on television and has found a new home with Apple.
Big Little Lies was shopped around to a lot of different suitors before it finally arrived on HBO. Given the success of that show, when Witherspoon was ready to launch a new show, everyone was lining up to get a chance at it. Hollywood Reporter says that after a furious bidding war, Apple has won the rights to a new Jennifer Aniston/Reese Witherspoon Morning Show drama.
The Morning Show drama, which doesn’t have a proper name yet, has been picked up for a straight-to-series two-season order (each season will run 10 episodes). Witherspoon will star, executive produce, and co-own the show alongside Michael Ellenberg’s Media Res company that will produce the show for Apple. Even though shows traditionally featuring female leads get less attention than others, the Witherspoon drama had gotten offers comparable to other sought-after properties.
The show will look into the lives of morning news anchors, the women, and men who wake America up every morning with the news of the day. The series will be completely new property, but it will be using Brian Stelter’s book Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of Morning TV, as additional background for the show to springboard from. There is no indication of the target audience yet because no scripts have been written.
Will Apple make shows in the same vein as HBO, Amazon, and Netflix or given their image as a provider of family goods will they make shows with content more similar to something on AMC? That is a question that also looms large for Apple’s over the acquisition, Amazing Stories, which is a reboot of the popular ’80s series by Steven Spielberg and Bryan Fuller. That series looks to fill a niche for Apple, the same way Twilight Zone might work out for CBS. Apple is certainly gearing up for a big move into their own television content, but what exactly that will look like at this point is anyone’s guess.
Another network this acquisition might smell trouble for is HBO. If for no other reason then it could signal the end of any hope for a continuation of Big Little Lies. There were some rumors that the talent involved in the show was interested in continuing the story, but to what extent was unknown. Big Little Lies was one of the big winners at this year’s Emmy awards and was certainly a prestige show for HBO. With Witherspoon tied up in a new endeavor, this could be the end of Big Little Lies.
Related Topics: Apple
