Apple TV Is Ready To Show You A Good Time In 2026

Apple TV pulled out all the stops for its press day on February 3, which served as appetizer for the full-course meal the streamer is about to serve its audience. A-list talent from 16 different projects proudly took part in the proceedings, announcing their upcoming movies and series with colorful panels displaying artwork behind them, and sometimes even sitting down for insightful panel discussions.

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Of course, not every project had an exact release date. Pluribus, Vince Gilligan’s critically acclaimed runaway success, has yet to begin filming season 2, while Apple TV’s first golden child Ted Lasso only teased Summer 2026 for its season 4 return. But there was a staggering number of release dates presented for highly-anticipated movies (like John Cena’s Matchbox, for one) and shows (Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, anyone?) alike.

The internet has been buzzing with excitement for several of the trailers and sneak peeks, but as ScreenRant was in attendance for the event itself, we’ve compiled a few highlights from the in-depths conversations to further whet fans’ appetites. Read on for more details on Apple TV’s exciting TV slate for 2026, and check out the full list of officially announced movie releases — from Keanu Reeves’ Outcome to Chris Pratt’s Way of the Warrior Kid — below.

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Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters Season 2 Further Explores Family Legacy

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Apple

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters executive producer Tory Tunnell led a fascinating conversation centered on how season 2 of the MonsterVerse series would explore the Randa family secrets even as it unveiled more Titans with which to delight audiences. Anna Sawai’s character, Cate, finds herself at a crossroads in the new episodes — which she tried to explain without spoilers.

In season 1, it was a lot of her being chased by these things. By the end of season 1, she’s starting to not fear them but show interest in her family legacy. Then in season 2, you really see her walk over that line and decide to not just uncover the secrets but create the legacy and keep moving it forward.

One very obvious indicator that Cate will be grappling with Randa family history is her encounter with her grandmother, Dr. Keiko Mirua (played by breakout star Mari Yamamoto), in Axis Mundi. Sawai reflected on expanding that dynamic in season 2, saying that, “I think it was really beautiful, because I don’t think (Cate) really had a proper childhood.” While she loved interacting with her onscreen grandmother, she was even more grateful for her costar. “I loved working with Mari, and every day on set I was so inspired and looked forward to working with her.”

Sawai had a lot of fun finding Cate’s “ownership” of the Randa legacy on set, but the actor teased that the choices each character makes to survive may be the most interesting aspect of all. “I think that we see that they all want to survive, but choose very different routes, and that creates a lot of drama.“

Kurt Russell, who plays the older Lee Shaw, also counted the Cate and Keiko scenes among his favorite. Furthermore, he revealed that his interpretation of Lee and Keiko’s relationship in the present was very much informed by her past scenes with his younger self (portayed by his real-life son, Wyatt Russell) and Bill Randa (Anders Holm).

Wyatt established the character. Watching them do that is what informs me about where they’re going. You also find answers in this second season that were set up in season 1, and there are more questions with those answers. What’s also memorable for me is the relationship that Anders and Mari had. That’s always in the background of my mind, when there’s a triangle and a love affair. That gets explored a lot in season 2, in a great way.

Tunnell also teased more Monarch mysteries in season 2. “There are some questions that we left unanswered in season 1, and we really dig into those.” Among the main themes, “We look into some of the secrets of the Randa family, and see that Lee Shaw was involved in all of the foundational moments of how both Monarch was created but also how this family came together with all their issues. we really get to do a deep dive on that in a way that I think audiences will find really compelling.“

As for the Titans themselves? Their scale is unfathomable, but the elder Russell kept his eye on the emotional prize as he offered his take on the season’s biggest them: “Not turning into a monster yourself as you’re trying to deal with these monsters. Every one of us has to face that.“

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed May Be As Stressful As It Is Pleasurable

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Apple

From creator and showrunner David J. Rosen comes Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, a dark comedy thriller that defies genre expectations. The newest tale from Rosen, who already has off-beat masterpieces such as Sugar and Hunters under his belt, stars Tatiana Maslany as a divorced mother whose flirtation with a camboy takes her down a spiraling path of blackmail and murder after she believes he’s witnessed a crime a take place.

Maslany is joined by New Girl‘s Jake Johnson, who plays her ex-husband with whom she is in the middle of a custody battle. The actress described her character, Paula, as someone “trying to balance all these different expectations of her and all these different roles in her life.” She’s a mother who works full-time and is “very dedicated to her job,” but also a woman dealing with her ex-husband’s new wife, “who’s caused a little bit of complexity” in her domestic life. For Maslany, the magic of the show comes down to the writing:

There’s just so many different worlds that she inhabits. Really, it was just about like being present, so when I come to set at the office, it felt like a totally different world than when I was at home with Hazel, my kid. The writing lives in so many different places, so a scene can play straight or it can play comedic, and it can play all things between. It’s really the joy of the writing that allows for that freedom.

Johnson echoed his costar’s sentiments about the scripts. “It felt so rich. It felt like we would talk a lot about what wasn’t in the script, and what we had to make up, but the script really guided us,” he gushed. “As long as we followed what David and that staff were doing, I felt like we were in really good shape.” Without a doubt, though, “the custody stuff” was what hit hardest for him. “You guys will see, it was really complicated, and it was really well-written.”

For would-be audience members wondering about the show’s thriller or comedy credentials, note that all 10 episodes were directed by David Gordon Green. With both The Righteous Gemstones and the most recent Halloween trilogy in his repertoire, it’s clear that Green knows when to dial up the tension and when to let some laughs in.

Imperfect Women Will Have You Guessing Until The End

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Apple

Imperfect Women not only stars but is alo executive produced by Elisabeth Moss and Kerry Washington, which would already be a strong selling point even if it wasn’t based on Araminta Hall’s delicious novel of the same name. To top it all off, the series creator is Annie Weisman, whose previous shows Physical and Based on a True Story made the most of their already wacky premises. The new psychological thriller follows Eleanor (Washington) and Mary (Moss) as they struggle to piece together the events leading up to their best friend Nancy’s (Kate Mara) murder.

Mary is not the kind of role fans might picture for Moss initially, being a homemaker who appears meek at first glance, but the actor felt a strong pull to her from the beginning: “I picked Mary because she felt different than anything I played before,” Moss revealed. “I tend to play the leader of the pack, and I liked playing somebody who was dealing with something else, who had a different trial and a different complexity.“

She prioritizes her children and prioritizes her home, and it was really meaningful to me to take on a role like that, given some recent new developments in my life. She really values creating a happy, beautiful home for her family. Of course, we have to have drama in our show, so obviously that doesn’t necessarily happen for her. But there’s a reason I wanted to play Mary.

Eleanor, meanwhile, is the perennial single lady of her friend group. Washington described her as “a little more commitment-averse or avoidant.” She is a career woman through and through, but “she has some secrets about kind of where she comes from, and how she was raised” that will come into play as the season progresses.

Mara’s Nancy presents a perfect facade of a happy and carefree life, but her past is littered with even more secrets than Eleanor’s. “Nancy is very much still trying to hide her past from people, and is definitely still trying to escape this other life that she had,” Mara explained.

If you think secrets sound like the word of the day, you’d be right. Washington shared that the prevailing theme of Imperfect Women is the facades humans hide behind, as seen through the eyes of female friendshup.

This is such an extraordinary chance to dive into what secrets look like in relationship and the difference between who we really are and who we present ourselves to be, even with the people we’re most intimate with. That is a theme that I keep returning to in my work and in my life, and I just thought I’d never seen it explored in female friendship in this way.

That difference is explored even in the structure of the series, as Moss pointed out. “Whatever you think about a character at the beginning of the episode, or sometimes even at the end of the episode, is not what you’re going to think about them in the next episode,” she teased. “It constantly changes points of view… That’s one of the unique things about the show that I was really excited about doing.“

Cape Fear Brings The Ambient Dread

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Apple

Cape Fear is a story that has been retold several times, but Apple TV’s new series takes direct inspiration from the 1991 remake directed by Martin Scorsese and produced by Steven Spielberg. It’s a storied pedigree that is only heightened with a top-tier cast that includes Amy Adams, Patrick Wilson, and Javier Bardem as the infamous Max Cady.

For those who are unfamiliar, Cape Fear follows a married couple whose lives are upended when the notorious psychopath they helped put behind bars returns hellbent on revenge. Adams explained that showrunner Nick Antosca’s script “captured that same fever dream energy” as the film, but also “opened a world of discovery for the characters to go so much deeper into their backstories.“

We bring in more of the family members into Max’s gaze, and to examine consequences. That’s one of the things that I was really attracted to: examining the consequences of the things we keep secret.

Wilson expressed a great deal of enthusiasm for the shades of gray in the 10-episode remake. “If you’re more familiar with the ’91 version, you know that everybody does something wrong,” he said. “It’s the messy part in between where all these people live.” He complimented how Antosca “gave us all these inner lives and inner moments of conflict, even within our own marriage,” which draws out the tension in a way that’s perfect for television.

Adams was especially effusive of Bardem’s performance as Max. “Javier has just such a natural charisma,” she gushed, adding that he “brings all of that charisma, all of that power, voice and presence,” to the role. “But he also brings a lot of vulnerability. There’s so much devastation in his portrayal that I look forward to you guys getting to see, on top of all of that beautiful bravado and energy and danger.“

Bardem’s interpretation of Max stands in contrast to Robert De Niro’s (and to Robert Mitchum’s before him), but Antosca has some solid backing for the tweaks he’s making to the beloved psychological thriller. “The movies are about acute fear. The moment you see Max walking straight into the camera as he comes out, he is like a swamp monster coming to kill you,” the showrunner explained. Meanwhile, “the show is about ambient dread that reflects the atmosphere of being alive in 2026 with its uncertainties and ambiguities and paranoia.”

Pluribus Season 2 Is Coming, Just Not As Soon As You Might Hope

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Apple

Fresh off a stellar first season that garnered lead Rhea Seehorn a Golden Globe, Pluribus is naturally the talk of the town. But fans who eagerly anticipate season 2 will have to adjust their expectations. It took creator Vince Gilligan “nine or ten years,” in his estimation, “to figure this show out,” so he’s working on a slightly different timeline.

“We are plugging away,” Gilligan promised, but “it takes a long time to come up with these episodes. We are deeper into the process at this moment than I would like, considering how few episodes we have figured out. But it takes some time, just as it did in the first season.” The showrunner made a lighthearted comparison to another critical darling, saying, “It ain’t going to be The Pitt, coming back every year. I wish it would be, because I think that’s an awesome show.“

On the bright side, the fandom is alive and thriving as viewers wait for more episodes, so there is plenty of extra-canonical content to sift through. Without a doubt, the most popular topic of conversation is Stursia, the nickname for the relationship between Carol Sturka and her hivemind copanion, Zosia (Karolina Wydra). Seehorn laughed abouot their costar Samba Schutte sending her fanart of the pairing “every day,” but declared that, “I think it’s awesome.”

Wydra sincerely added her own gratitude for fans of the series, as well:

I am on Instagram, so I see some of them, and I really do enjoy them. I think they’re quite beautiful, and the sentiment is beautiful. I love the love that people have for us as characters and the journey that we go on. They’re cheering us on, and it’s been very sweet.

See the full list of upcoming Apple TV release dates revealed on the press day here: