Apple lures Hulu, Legendary executives over to its video team

Apple continues to snag executives from competing video companies in order to build out its growing video team, this time hiring away from Hulu and Legendary Entertainment.

Philip Matthys, formerly head of business affairs at Hulu, has taken on the same role at Apple, according to Variety. Jennifer Wang Grazier from Legendary has also come over to the business affairs team for Apple’s video division.

With these additions, Apple continues a string of recent hires as it gears up a video content team to take on streaming video titans like Amazon and Netflix.

In June, Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg both left Sony Picture Television—after a run that saw them help produce series including “The Crown,” “Rescue Me,” “Breaking Bad” and its spinoff “Better Call Saul”—to take on newly created positions at Apple.

“It will be an honor to be part of the Apple team,” said Erlicht in a statement. “We want to bring to video what Apple has been so successful with in their other services and consumer products—unparalleled quality.”

In August, Matt Cherniss, former president at WGN America, joined Apple to take on the role of chief creative/head of U.S. programming and report directly to Erlicht and Van Amburg.

RELATED: Former WGN president Cherniss joins Apple as head of U.S. programming

The video team at Apple will be in charge of spending the $1 billion budget the company has reportedly allotted for original programming over the next year. Apple reportedly wants to use that money to acquire and produce as many as 10 TV series.

Apple has already been debuting some of its own original series. Earlier this year, the company rolled out a spinoff of late night host James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke segments as well as a series titled “Planet of the Apps,” which allows developers to pitch ideas to a panel of celebrity judges.