Apple enters into a first-look deal with Imagine Documentaries

Director/producer Ron Howard and his production partner Brian Grazer have made a new, first-look deal with Apple to air its Imagine Documentaries films on the company’s upcoming video streaming service, according to Variety.

The article says the deal suggests that Apple sees documentary films and series as an important element of the video platform it’s been working on for more than 18 months. In September, Apple acquired global rights to the feature doc, The Elephant Queen, which will screen later this month at the Sundance Film Festival.

Imagine’s push into documentaries began a few years ago with such projects as The Beatles: Eight Days a Week — the Touring Years, directed by Howard, and Jay-Z’s Made in America, Katy Perry: Part of Me, and Inside Deep Throat.

Not counting any work that results from this new deal, Apple has 28 scripted series in then works. Upcoming original programming titles from Apple include:

“Amazing Stores,” 

“Are You Sleeping,” 

“Home,” “Little America,” 

“See,” 

An untitled Damien Chazelle drama, 

an untitled Reese Witherspoon/Jennifer Anniston/Steve Carrell dramedy, “Dickinson” (a half-hour comedy starring Hailee Stenifeld), 

an Ronald D. Moore science-fiction drama dubbed “For All Mankind,” 

An untitled M. Night Shyamalan thriller series, 

A TV series adaption of “Foundation,” the Isaac Asimov science fiction novel trilogy, 

The half-hour dramedy “Little Voices” from producers J.J. Abrams and Sara Bareilles, 

“Little America” from the screenwriters (Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani) of “The Big Sick” and producer/writer Lee Eisenberg, 

A drama series about pre-teen investigative reporter Hilde Lysiak, 

A TV series based on the “Time Bandits” movie, 

An English-language adaptation of the French short-form series Canal+, “See,” a world-building drama set in the future, 

A series based on the bestselling 2017 novel “Pachinko,” 

A half-hour scripted comedy from Rob McElhenney and Charlie Day, “Defending Jacob” starring Chris Evans, 

A series produced by Anonymous Content and based on the New York Times article, “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change,”

An AAU basketball drama series dubbed Swagger from NBA superstar Kevin Durant,

“My Glory Was I Had Such Friends,” a limited TV series for Apple. The one-hour limited drama stars and is executive produced by Jennifer Garner and executive produced by J.J. Abrams via his Bad Robot Productions banner. Based on the 2017 memoir of the same name by Amy Silverstein, “the story showcases the power of friendship and the resilience of the human spirit as it follows an extraordinary group of women who supported Silverstein as she waited for a second life-saving heart transplant.”

Original series, specials, and shorts based on the “Peanuts” gang of characters created by Charles M. Schulz.