Apple Lands Siegfried & Roy Podcast As Tech Giant Steps Up Move Into Original Audio Series

EXCLUSIVE: Apple is to launch a podcast about pop culture icons Siegfried & Roy – marking one of its first major forays into original audio series.

The series has landed at Apple TV+, its television and film division, and will launch on the Apple podcast platform.

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It comes at a time where competition is becoming more prevalent in the podcast business with major rival Spotify getting heavily into originals that only live on its platform.

Apple has cautiously dipped its toes into original shows in the past but they have largely been focused around its music platform – The Zane Lowe Podcast Series – or its original television shows such as For All Mankind.

Earlier this month, it unveiled The Line from Alex Gibney’s Jigsaw Productions, which will feature an original podcast series and a TV docuseries. The Siegfried & Roy series marks the first major show to come without an immediate television companion.

The Siegfried & Roy podcast comes from Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Steven Leckart, a director and producer on Netflix’s Challenger: The Final Flight, and writer on HBO’s What’s My Name: Muhammad Ali.

Siegfried & Roy were a duo of German-American entertainers, best known for their appearances with white lions and tigers. Siegfried Fischbacher died in January, while Roy Horn, born Uwe Horn, died of Covid-19 last year. Famously in 2003, a white tiger named Montecore attacked and badly injured horn during their act at the Mirage in Las Vegas.

Premiering later this year, the series will present an in-depth look at the most famous, controversial magicians in history, who were widely misunderstood, frequently satirized and feverishly criticized. It will deconstruct the illusions they created, the empire they constructed, and what really happened on the night that a tiger attack ended their reign.

The series is exec produced by Leckart and Will Malnati of podcast production company At Will Media, which makes the For All Mankind podcast as well as the official The Boys podcast for Amazon, Bill Clinton’s Why Am I Telling You This? and Audible original series Sorry Charlie Miller starring Zachary Quinto.

The deal was done by Oren Rosenbaum at UTA, which represents At Will Media with legal representation handled by Shaun Gordon at Weintraub Tobin.

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