Apple TV+ Expands Fantasy Fare

Apple TV+’s newest sci-fi drama, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which is based on Legendary Entertainment’s Monsterverse, could mark Apple’s first foray into 3D and immersive content.

Reports FlatPanelsHD:

In June when Apple announced the Vision Pro headset, the company also announced a new ‘Immersive Video’ format designed for “180-degree high-resolution recordings with Spatial Audio”. It is an evolution over stereoscopic 3D that allows the user to be more immersed and to look around. And Monarch: Legacy of Monsters has been shooting in this format, according to Screen Times podcast host Sigmund Judge’s sources in June at WWDC 2023. In July, a new rumour started circulating that Apple has been shooting many more Apple TV+ shows in the immersive video format.

Beginning in 2014 with Godzilla and continuing with 2017’s Kong: Skull Island, 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters and 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, the Monsterverse has earned nearly $2 billion globally at the box office, with Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire still to come.

Reads the blurb for the 10-part Apple TV+ series:

Following the thunderous battle between Godzilla and the Titans that levelled San Francisco and the shocking revelation that monsters are real, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters tracks two siblings following in their father’s footsteps to uncover their family’s connection to the secretive organisation known as Monarch. Clues lead them into the world of monsters and ultimately down the rabbit hole to Army officer Lee Shaw (played by Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell), taking place in the 1950s and half a century later where Monarch is threatened by what Shaw knows. The dramatic saga – spanning three generations – reveals buried secrets and the ways that epic, earth-shattering events can reverberate through our lives.

It’s not know when the series will premiere globally but it will join an expanding Apple TV+ slate of world-building dramas, including Silo, Foundation and Invasion, which launches its second season on Wednesday.

Apple TV+ also has dropped the trailer for the September 8 premiere of The Changeling, which it bills as “a fairytale for grown-ups”.

The eight-part series stars LaKeith Stanfield, Clark Backo, Adina Porter, Samuel T. Herring, Alexis Louder and Jared Abrahamson.

And new from November 8 on the streaming service will be an eight-part adaptation of Edith Wharton’s unfinished novel, The Buccaneers. Reads the blurb:

A group of fun-loving young American girls explode into the tightly corseted London season of the 1870s, kicking off an Anglo-American culture clash as the land of the stiff upper lip is infiltrated by a refreshing disregard for centuries of tradition. Sent to secure husbands and titles, the buccaneers’ hearts are set on much more than that, and saying “I do” is just the beginning …

Christina Hendricks, Kristine Frøseth, Alisha Boe, Josie Totah, Aubri Ibrag, Imogen Waterhouse and Mia Threapleton star.