Objective-C equivalent of simple Swift video player does not show video - swift

Question

I'm creating a simple storyboard that plays an mp4 video. This works as expected in Swift, but when I try to do the exact same thing in Objective-C nothing happens.
Can anyone see if I'm doing anything wrong in the Objective-C code converted from Swift?
Notes:
Both projects are empty except for the view controller implementation
The video file anim2.mp4 is indeed included in both projects
For technical reasons, the video player must utilize Objective-C
Code:
// Swift implementation
import UIKit
import AVKit
import AVFoundation
class ViewController: UIViewController {
override func viewDidLoad() {
super.viewDidLoad()
let path = Bundle.main.path(forResource: "anim2", ofType:"mp4");
let url = NSURL(fileURLWithPath: path!) as URL;
let player = AVPlayer(url: url);
let playerLayer = AVPlayerLayer(player: player);
playerLayer.frame = self.view.bounds;
self.view.layer.addSublayer(playerLayer);
player.play();
}
}
// Objective-C implementation
#import "ViewController.h"
#import <AVKit/AVKit.h>
#import <AVFoundation/AVFoundation.h>
#interface ViewController ()
#end
#implementation ViewController
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
NSString* path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:#"anim2" ofType:#"mp4"];
NSURL* url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path isDirectory:false];
AVPlayer* player = [[AVPlayer alloc] initWithURL:url];
AVPlayerLayer* playerLayer = [[AVPlayerLayer alloc] initWithLayer:player];
playerLayer.frame = self.view.bounds;
[self.view.layer addSublayer:playerLayer];
[player play];
}
#end

Answer 1

This line is not the same:
AVPlayerLayer* playerLayer = [[AVPlayerLayer alloc] initWithLayer:player];
That tries to treat an AVPlayer as a CALayer, which is going to quietly fail. You don't get a warning here because initWithLayer: takes id as its type.
What you meant was:
AVPlayerLayer* playerLayer = [AVPlayerLayer playerLayerWithPlayer: player];