Somewhat unsurprisingly, Apple told Deadline that last weekend’s debut of the Tom Hanks movie ‘Finch’ was its biggest ever. As usual, it isn’t releasing firm numbers but the company said Finch drove the biggest opening weekend for Apple TV ever. The previous most popular Apple Original Films premiere was Tom Hanks’ submarine war movie ‘Greyhound’, released last year.

Apple has also reportedly seen strong audience numbers for its recent TV slate including Foundation, Invasion, The Morning Show season two and of course Ted Lasso season two.

Obviously, this all falls somewhat flat with no hard figures to back it up. Apple TV+ is believed to have between 20-40 million subscribers worldwide, but none of its content has really broken out into culture aside from the Emmy-winning and widely-popular comedy Ted Lasso.

However, a slow start was to be expected for an ‘all-originals’ service with no back catalog. Apple is currently approaching 100 original titles, and is expected to launch at least fifty more across 2022.

One of the major television series in production for Apple TV+ is also a Tom Hanks collaboration, as Apple readies a follow-up to Band of Brothers and The Pacific, with the sweeping big-budge limited series ‘Masters of the Air’. Hanks and Spielberg serve as executive producers. The show is expected to finish filming later this month and will likely release in late 2022.

Apple Original Films pipeline is also accelerating with dozens of projects in active production. Next year, Apple will launch flagship original films including Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Emancipation starring Will Smith, spy thriller Argyle with star-studded ensemble cast among others.