Friendo sez: “Apple’s Reckoning Day is at hand after an avalanche of free spending (Napoleon, Blitz, Wolfs, Fly Me to the Moon, Killers of the Flower Moon, Argylle) and not much to show for it. Tim Cook has told his dumbo execs to lower budgets and actually make hits….duhhh.

Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg were the new Golan Globus but with unlimited funds — soft-touch bros, the art of over-spending. Now their purse strings have been pulled tight.

“Apple’s strategy was basically to buy into big names…Scorsese, DiCaprio, Scott, Clooney, Pitt, etc. Clooney dismissed reports that he and Pitt were way overpaid for Wolfs, but I heard they were, in fact, overpaid by a tonload. Does anyone care that Wolfs 2 has been tossed?”

Apple’s strange decision to keep Steve McQueen‘s Blitz out of the major early-fall festivals is still a head-scratcher. I fell for Blitz after finally catching it a couple of weeks ago, and it just didn’t add up to show disrespect for McQueen’s expertise and vision.

After Blitz, the best Apple film by far IMHO is Doug Liman‘s The Instigators — here’s what I wrote about it on 8.18.24: