Apple TV sets drone record over Los Angeles

Apple TV turned the night sky over Los Angeles into a floating billboard this week, launching a 3,000 drone light show to promote season two of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, as TechRadar reports.

The 12 minute aerial display reached up to 500 feet above the city and stretched across an area equal to roughly three American football fields. According to Apple TV+, the event set a world record for the tallest aerial display of a fictional character formed by drones.

3,000 drones recreate Monsterverse icons

The synchronized fleet formed massive sky images of Godzilla and King Kong, along with the new villain, Titan X. Fireworks were integrated into the choreography to enhance key transitions.

The display surpassed a 2024 aerial drone formation of Wolverine, which previously held the height record in this category.

Drone light shows have increasingly replaced fireworks in major marketing campaigns, offering programmable precision, lower noise impact, and reusable hardware. Events of this scale require advanced flight control systems, precise RTK positioning, and redundant communication links to safely coordinate thousands of aircraft simultaneously.

Organized by Heads in the Sky

The event was produced by creative agency Heads in the Sky, a company specializing in large scale drone displays. Actors from the series attended the show, including Kurt Russell.

The series is part of the Monsterverse franchise developed by Legendary Entertainment. Season two premieres February 27.

Drone light shows continue scaling up

Large scale drone swarms are becoming a standard tool for global entertainment brands. The combination of scale, altitude, and character recognition in this event shows how far formation flight software and drone reliability have progressed in recent years.

While this was a marketing event, the technical takeaway is clear. Coordinated fleets of thousands of UAVs are now operating safely at significant altitude in dense urban airspace, under tight synchronization and strict regulatory oversight.

Expect more record attempts as entertainment companies compete not just on screens, but in the sky.

DroneXL’s Take

This was the perfect way to put the audience into the show, or at least, to show the real size of this creatures.

Three thousand drones flying 500 feet above Los Angeles without incident reflects serious advances in navigation precision, redundancy systems, and airspace coordination.

Entertainment continues to push the upper limits of scale, and each new record quietly stress tests the systems that could later support emergency response, public safety, and large scale communications applications.

The monsters may be fictional. The drone capability is very real.

Photp credit: Youtube / Apple TV