On the same day that Apple TV+ announced a 30% price rise, news has broken that one of its key TV execs is leaving the company. Creative executive Chris Parnell is leaving Apple and is joining Paramount+, per Deadline.
Parnell joined Apple back in 2020 and spearheaded development of many high-profile TV+ originals, including Dark Matter, Bad Monkey, and the upcoming Vince Gilligan series Pluribus.
Before Apple, Parnell worked at Sony Pictures. If you recall, the co-heads of Apple TV+ are Zack Van Amburg and Jamie Erlicht, who previously ran Sony Television. Parnell is one of the people that the duo recruited away from Sony. He reported to Matt Cherniss, who reports to Van Amburg and Erlicht.
In his role, Parnell also oversaw production of many immersive of the titles that are available to stream on Apple Vision Pro, including the recent feature-length Bono documentary.
Parnell has clearly been wooed by the new leadership at Paramount, which merged with Skydance earlier this month, and is now led by David Ellison, son of the billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison.
Following Ellison’s takeover, Paramount has been making big swings to attract talent and ink content deals, including signing Stranger Things’ creators Duffer Brothers away from Netflix.
Whether it says anything at all about Apple’s future in television remains to be seen. Talent turnover in Hollywood is commonly brisk. It is very possible Parnell simply enjoyed his tenure at Apple for five years and is now looking for new challenges.