Maya Rudolph and Natasha Lyonne’s Animal Pictures signs first-look deal with Apple TV Plus

Apple TV+ just can’t get enough of Maya Rudolph. Just days after the premiere of Rudolph’s workplace comedy Loot on the streamer, Rudolph’s production company Animal Pictures has signed a first-look deal with Apple, Deadline reports. Rudolph runs Animal Pictures alongside Natasha Lyonne and President Danielle Renfrew Behrens.

The new, multi-year agreement with Apple will cover both series and digital feature films from Animal. Founded in 2018, Animal Pictures previously had a first-look TV-exclusive deal with Amazon Studios.

In addition to Loot, which follows Rudolph as a jilted billionaire who decides girl-bossing is the best revenge, Animal Pictures is also behind Lyonne’s acclaimed Netflix series Russian Doll. The stylized, time-jumping show has gained critical acclaim, with The A.V. Club writer Saloni Gajjar calling Russian Doll’s second season an “exquisitely trippy odyssey” in her review.

Animal Pictures is also behind Rian Johnson’s first-ever TV series Poker Face, which will stream on Peacock, and The Hospital, an adult animated series that received a two-season order from Amazon Studios. The company has also begun exploring film, recently premiering its first-ever feature Crush and touting a music documentary Sirens due out later this year, which will follow an all-female thrash metal band based in Beirut, per Deadline.

Apple scooping up a long-term deal with two established offbeat voices like Lyonne and Rudolph falls at the nexus of the streamer’s gung-ho charge into the world of television. Apple built favor with viewers off of lovable MVP’s Ted Lasso and Severance, and has since set its sights on bigger, more epic dramas like the generational Pachinko and Gary Oldman’s Slow Horses.

Alongside Animal Pictures, Apple has the chance to bulk up its more irreverent content alongside its prestige historical dramas. Perhaps a Bridesmaids for the streaming age could even be in store— after all, if Hollywood knows one thing right now, it’s that rom-coms are back.