Monday was a big day for Apple, offering an opportunity for the iPhone maker to use the occasion of its annual Worldwide Developers Conference to push back against the conventional wisdom that the company isn’t falling behind in the ongoing AI boom. The WWDC keynote wasn’t exclusively about AI, though; in fact, those of us who are fans of Apple TV+, the company’s Netflix-like streaming service, also got a treat in the form of a sizzle reel teasing new and returning Apple TV+ releases coming soon.
The reel, which you can check out in full at the bottom of this post, gave us our first sneak peeks at two highly anticipated returning Apple shows — the dystopian dramas Silo and Severance — in addition to previewing new films and series, including an Apple movie that reunites George Clooney and Brad Pitt on screen for the first time since 2008.
In honor of this fall being the fifth anniversary of the launch of Apple TV+ (it launched back in November 2019), we’ll take a look at five of Apple’s biggest and best upcoming titles below.
Severance: Season 2 (Release date: “Coming soon”)
The sight of new footage from Severance during WWDC sent a buzz through many Apple TV+ fans online yesterday, given that the Adam Scott-led workplace drama definitely qualifies as one of the best of the streamer’s releases.
Severance tells the story of a fictional corporation (Lumon Industries) that puts its workers through an extraordinary surgical operation in which their work lives are “severed” mentally from their personal lives. They even speak of themselves as two separate people — their “innie” self refers to everything going on inside the four walls of Lumon, while their “outie” refers to their normal, non-work lives.
Scott — who plays Mark Scout, working in the “corporate archives” division of the mysterious Lumon Industries — has confirmed that, in addition to filming having wrapped on Season 2 of Severance, we apparently won’t have to wait long at all for its release. “I wish I could tell you and everybody about what’s coming up because it’s going to be so much fun,” Scott teased in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
Silo: Season 2 (Release date: “Coming soon”)
Apple TV+ has also been knocking it out of the park with its steadily growing pile of sci-fi dramas — one of the best examples of which is Silo, based on author Hugh Howey’s series of novels.
The show is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the last remnants of humanity live in a giant silo underground. The silo supposedly protects humanity from the toxic and deadly world aboveground. Rebecca Ferguson stars as Juliette, an engineer who seeks answers about a loved one’s murder — and who, bit by bit, starts unraveling the show’s mysteries like who built the silo and why. And what happens to the people who are sent above, outside the silo, to “clean.”
Put it this way: The show is so good, there’s no way you won’t run out and immediately buy the books once you finish Season 1. You’ll want to know more right away.
The Instigators (Release date: August 9)
One of two Apple TV+ movies on this list, director Doug Liman’s The Instigators stars Matt Damon (Rory) and Casey Affleck (Cobby) as reluctant partners — they’re a desperate father and an ex-con who get together to rob a corrupt politician of his ill-gotten money.
“But when the heist goes wrong,” Apple explains, “the two find themselves engulfed in a whirlwind of chaos, pursued not only by police but also by backward bureaucrats and vengeful crime bosses. Completely out of their depth, they convince Rory’s therapist (Hong Chau) to join their riotous getaway through the city, where they must put aside their differences and work together to evade capture — or worse.”
Wolfs (Release date: September 20 in theaters)
We don’t have an Apple TV+ release date yet for this next title, but we do know when it will be in theaters.
George Clooney and Brad Pitt are reuniting for their first movie since 2008’s Burn After Reading, and it will debut in theaters on Sept. 20. In Apple’s Wolfs, directed by Jon Watts, Clooney and Pitt play a pair of professional fixers, both of whom are lone-wolf types and who’ve been hired for the same job.
Clooney’s character is hired to cover up a crime, but he and Pitt’s fixer realize they’re going to have to work together when they both show up to the same job and find their night quickly spiraling out of control.
Pachinko: Season 2 (Release date: August 23)
Finally, we also have a release date for the highly anticipated second season of one of the best dramas Apple TV+ has released so far. It’s showrunner Soo Hugh’s Pachinko, a multi-generational family drama adapted from Min Jin Lee’s bestselling 2017 novel of the same name.
Pachinko immerses you in a story about Kim Sunja, a Korean woman portrayed at different ages and different stages of the narrative by actresses Minha Kim and Yuh-Jung Youn. We follow her and her family through several decades as a way of personalizing the long-ago tension between Korean and Japanese societies.
The story, Apple says, “chronicles the hopes and dreams of a Korean immigrant family across four generations as they leave their homeland in an indomitable quest to survive and thrive. Starting in South Korea in the early 1900s, the story is told through the eyes of a remarkable matriarch, Sunja, who triumphs against all odds.”
The cast includes Anna Sawai, who since the release of Season 1 has gone on to star as Lady Mariko in one of the best and most critically acclaimed shows of 2024, FX’s Shogun. In Pachinko, Sawai plays Noami, a Harvard-educated businesswoman who faces workplace discrimination and becomes an ally to Solomon (who’s the grandson of Sunja).
