Welcome to Daily Variety, your daily dose of news and analysis for entertainment industry insiders. It's Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026. I'm your host, Cynthia Littleton. I am co-editor-in-chief of Variety alongside Ramin Setoodeh. I'm in LA, he's in New York, and Variety has reporters around the world covering the business of entertainment. On today's episode, coming at you straight from this week's Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, we will hear from two titans in their fields, Apple senior executive Eddy Cue and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Eddy Cue was honored as Cannes Lions Entertainment Person of the Year on Monday. Cue and Bruckheimer did an on-stage Q&A, and a few hours later, the two sat down with me for an interview at that most can-tastic of settings, the Carlton Hotel. We talk about a lot of things. We talk about the evolution of Apple's TV and film strategy, the new boss coming to the helm in Cupertino in September, the prospect of Brad Pitt starring in an F1 The Movie sequel, and we talk about whether Apple has any heightened appetite for buying a studio or a big content library given the way of the world these days. It's a lively conversation, but before we get to all of that, here are a few headlines just in this morning that you need to know. Google has struck a deal with indie film distributor A24 to set up an AI research partnership. The deal calls for the buzzy independent studio behind Backrooms to work with Google's DeepMind unit to develop AI-powered technologies for filmmakers. As part of the deal, Google is investing roughly $75 million in A24. Olivia Rodrigo has set the all-female lineup for her inaugural Daisy Chain Fields Festival, which will take place August 29th at the Great Park in Irvine. The bill includes Chapel Roan, Doechii, Cat Eye, Mitski, The Breeders, Bikini Kill, and Garbage. It also promises special guests Karen O, Stevie Nicks, and the spiritual godmother of this event, Sarah McLachlan. All of these stories and so much more can be found on variety.com right now.
And now it's time for conversations with industry leaders about news and trends in show business. Eddy Cue and Jerry Bruckheimer fit that definition. The two collaborated closely on F1 the movie, and Bruckheimer assures us that Brad Pitt will be back in the driver's seat for a sequel as soon as they send him a script that he likes. We also talk about the origins of Apple TV and the changing of the guard that is coming to Apple on September 1st when Tim Cook hands the CEO scepter to Apple veteran Jon Turnus. Eddy Cue and Jerry Bruckheimer, thank you so much for making some time for me today.
I appreciate it. It's great to be here with you. I always love talking to you, so this is a nice occasion to do it with beautiful sun and sea outside the window. It's fantastic here.
The setting of this very busy work week really could be a lot worse. And congratulations to you, Eddy. You are the Cannes Lion Entertainment Person of the Year. That's a pretty lofty honor. It's hard to believe, but 2017, Jamie Erlicht, Zack Van Amburg, you brought those characters over and really revved up activity. So, as you come up now next year, it'll be 10 years. How would you say being in movie and television and the world of content, how would you say that has changed the larger organization, the larger Apple organization?
Well, we've always had a great appreciation for artists of all kinds, whether it was an architect, a photographer, a painter, musicians. So, to be a part of the process and to feel like we're contributing in that, I think all of Apple is incredibly proud to see the work and feel like we've gotten into this area and done it the Apple way of trying to create the best content that's out there. If you go back 10 years ago, most people, including some people inside of Apple, were like, this is crazy. There's no way you'll be able to do this. The bar is so high. I think people at Apple are really, really proud that Apple TV is theirs. And honestly, that's why I'm here. We've always been about trying to be the best, not the most. And so, we wanted to have this place where the best people can come to work and we're going to help them create their best work. That was the mission, the plan, and it's great to see it come to fruition in so many ways. I learned this from Steve back when he was the CEO of Pixar at one point and he was CEO of Apple. And I was asking him like, why are the Pixar movies all hits? And he's like, it's really simple. It always begins and ends with the story. Until we get the story right, then you can't do everything else. And so, it's like, if you have a great story and then you put great people working on it, then these magical moments happen that we all love.
It starts with the story. It starts with the characters. It starts with the themes, and that's what it's all about. And then you have to get the right talent, whether it's a book or an article or original idea or a documentary or whatever it is. It's like what they did with television. Hiring Zack and Jamie was a brilliant move. And look at the shows that they put on the air. It's unbelievable that those two men, along with Eddy and his team, put so much quality television on Apple Plus. It takes a team, and they made the right decision on who they wanted to bring in and do it and work with them. And the same thing they did with us with F1. They made us better. And that's what you want as a partner. You want somebody to come in and be a partner that makes you be at the top of your game. And allows you to hire the people that you need to make the right type of movie. And other places would just say, oh, you don't need to do this, you don't need to do that. But as it turned out, the movie was the most authentic racing movie ever made. And the highest-grossing sports movie. And the highest, you know, I mean, it was just one of those things that just clicked. And it was because of what they allowed us to do.
Do you judge Apple TV against a peer group? Do you look at the performance of Netflix and Hulu? Do you judge it in that kind of traditional business sense where you look for a peer group and look at how it's performing, or do you have different metrics?
Well, they all matter. You can't ignore some of the bottom line because that's a scoreboard that's the customers giving you feedback on. But, you know, one of the ways I always look at it is, are there other shows or movies that I wish we had done?
At this time of transition for a lot of Hollywood assets, were you at all tempted to jump into the Warner Brothers Discovery fray? Is there appetite for getting deeper into the studio side of the business with a library? Has that increased at all with everything going on?
We're pretty deep into it. We're making a lot of shows and movies from that standpoint. And you know, we set out from the very beginning that if we were putting the Apple brand and name on something, then it was something that we were creating. We weren't doing it to take somebody else's content or core piece. So, I still feel very strongly about that. It was harder than I thought, I'm sure. I know it was because when you start with zero, it takes a while to build a library. But now we have a library and it's great. We've got some great shows that people are seeing for the first time. We got a new Ted Lasso. But the truth is there's a lot of people now that haven't seen Ted Lasso because that was years ago and we were way smaller. And so, we're going to introduce a whole lot of new people to Ted Lasso this summer with a new season. And no, I like the way we're doing it. It's kind of like what we set out to do. It just takes a while to get to where we are. And here we are.
Apple TV, Apple worldwide video came to be through you and Tim Cook. Do you have a sense of where John Turnus is in terms of his vision and interest in the entertainment side of the house?
