Still, if Apple had a unique insight, it wasn’t “this movie is a strong contender for a best picture Oscar.” It was more like “it’s worth $25m to us to buy this movie,” which from my perspective remains to be shown.
Yeah, it remains to be shown. They definitely had some criteria to believe it'd be successful though. The criteria they were aiming for could have been any or all of the following: getting more Apple TV+ subscribers, sustaining existing subscribers, having that specific movie get more views, and/or building up a good library of content