Audiences are living firmly in the middle of the streaming inflation era. Price hikes are about a yearly occurrence for the major entertainment platforms nowadays, with 2026 alone already seeing subscription costs for all of Paramount+, Netflix, YouTube Premium, Prime Video, and Crunchyroll increase. In August alone, Peacock jumped up an extra dollar for its select plan, two dollars for premium with ads, and three for ad-free in anticipation of the NFL and NBA seasons, while ESPN is also set to raise prices next month. Yet another service is now following suit with a fairly hefty hike across the board for U.S. customers.
Effective immediately on August 28, Apple TV will see its monthly rates rise to $14.99, up from $12.99, while its yearly cost will go from $99 to $119. That hike comes almost exactly one year after a three-dollar increase last August, meaning the streaming subscription has effectively risen by 50% over the past year. New customers will have to pay this new number right away if they want to get access to series like Severance and Slow Horses, but current subscribers will be given roughly a one-month notice before the change is reflected on their bill. Those looking to take advantage of Apple One, which bundles all of the tech giant’s subscription services in one place, will also face higher costs, as the individual price has been raised from $19.95 to $21.95.
Apple TV has been right there with the rest of streaming with its constant price increases. This latest move marks its fourth in four years and now puts the cost for a monthly subscription at triple what it was when the service first launched in 2019. A lot has changed since then, though. Apple’s once limited library has now grown to over 300 film and television titles while the brand has become associated with modern prestige television, from the aforementioned Severance and Slow Horses to Emmy juggernaut comedies Ted Lasso and The Studio, and acclaimed sci-fi darlings like Foundation, Silo, and Pluribus. As its reputation grows with award wins and glowing praise for its programming, so too, however, have profits increased. Apple executives touted record-high viewership last quarter and cited the streamer as one of the major forces behind the company’s services division earning $30.7 billion in that time, a 12% boost from last year.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Apple TV Is in the Middle of a Very Strong Year
The price increase runs counter to a year in which Apple TV has thrived, landing a record 87 Emmy nominations this year as well as the most-nominated freshman series of 2026, the Matthew Rhys-led horror comedy Widow’s Bay. New seasons of some of the streamer’s most reliable draws are also back, including the currently-running Season 4 of Ted Lasso as well as Shrinking‘s emotional third season, Silo Season 3, and more. Margo’s Got Money Troubles, meanwhile, represented one of the newest breakouts to come from the platform, alongside the new Cape Fear limited series with Javier Bardem. Season 6 of Slow Horses headlines the series on the horizon, while the Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh two-hander Mayday and Matchbox with John Cena represent two of its highest-profile original film releases. That’s all without mentioning the live sports content on offer from Major League Baseball, Formula 1, and more.
Stay tuned here at Collider for more on the future of Apple TV+ and the streaming financial landscape as prices continue to rise.
Release Date
April 28, 2026
Network
Apple TV
Showrunner
Katie Dippold
Directors
Sam Donovan, Andrew DeYoung, Hiro Murai, Ti West
Writers
Alberto Roldán, Neil Casey, Kelly Galuska, Colton Dunn, Dave Harris, Katie Dippold, Mackenzie Dohr
