Record-setting sales are almost as much an annual Sundance ritual as complaints about freezing in long lines, but the $25 million–plus Apple spent to secure one of the festival’s opening night movies was jaw-dropping even in an era when streaming services regularly shell out huge sums for otherwise low-key projects. The price tag for CODA, a confident tear-jerker about a hearing daughter of deaf parents, doesn’t seem categorically different from the $30 million Netflix spent on Malcolm & Marie, a pandemic-shot chamber drama that is basically two hours of black-and-white footage of movie stars yelling at each other. But while Netflix is writing big checks from a position of strength, Apple TV+ has struggled to amass a catalog of hits big enough to keep viewers on the hook. According to a recent survey, nearly half of respondents canceled at least one streaming service between April and October of last year, which means that viewers are starting to hit their limit on how many they can be subscribed to at the same time. Apple has extended its initial one-year subscriptions for free several times, undoubtedly trying to stave off a major drop in numbers as renewals come due. (Considering that the tech giant has also been including a free year with the purchase of select devices, that means many viewers are coming up on 18 months of Apple TV+ without having spent a dime.) The streaming wars, it seems, have entered their