Amazon officially completes its acquisition of MGM for $8.5B
The legendary film and television studio is nearly 100 years old
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Amazon has confirmed that it has completed its acquisition of MGM for $8.5 billion, per Variety. The original offer stood at a cool $9 billion. The sale process began last May and has been undergoing analysis by trade regulators since then.
A recent review from the European Commission stated that the services of MGM and the retail-but-also-lots-of-other-stuff giant have “limited” overlap, also concluding that “overall MGM is not among the top production studios.” Now, the merger has gone unchallenged by the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S., signaling a go-ahead for the deal.
While Amazon Studios has been building a diverse library of original content for its Prime Video platform, including recent Oscar-nominated fare like Sound Of Metal and Being The Ricardos, it’s impossible to compare it to the back catalog of a company founded in 1924. A statement from Amazon reads, “The storied, nearly century-old studio—with more than 4,000 film titles, 17,000 TV episodes, 180 Academy Awards, and 100 Emmy Awards—will complement Prime Video and Amazon Studios’ work in delivering a diverse offering of entertainment choices to customers.”
James Bond stands out as MGM’s flagship film property, though that was not enough for the European Commission to name the studio as a major player, even considering No Time To Die’s strong box office performance last year. Other recent feature releases include Dog, Cyrano, Licorice Pizza, and House Of Gucci.
The studio is also the home of the Rocky series, which has a third Creed movie in the works. On the TV side, MGM has produced everything from prestige dramas Fargo and The Handmaid’s Tale to reality favorites like Survivor, Shark Tank, and the Real Housewives franchise.
The news of Amazon’s MGM buyout follows the recent merging of WarnerMedia and Discovery, which will be combining its streaming platforms HBO Max and Discovery+.
26 Comments
Looking forward to the next Bond film, where Bond is called in to prevent warehouse workers from organizing a union.
And no female protagonist along for the adventure, just a digital assistant issued to him by Q named Alexa (purely coincidence).
Set that warehouse on a British colony in the Caribbean, and add in a sinister European mastermind of the union, and that’s probably already a plot in one of the Fleming novels.
Come on Stargate revival.
This is the only thing that is remotely positive about the situation. Stargate revival and putting all the shows on an easily accessible service (RIP Stargate Command).
indeed
Once again, one of the biggest and richest companies in the world, who happens to be trying to succeed in the crowded streaming space, has failed to acquire a bunch of media IP that would surely help them in their goal of being a major streaming service.
Amazon has confirmed that it has completed its acquisition of MGM for $8.5 billion, per Variety. The original offer stood at a cool $9 million. Hell of a negotiation on MGM’s part to get the offer from $9 Million to $8.5 Billion. I’m curious what their strategy was.
I’m curious what Amazon’s strategy was as well, given the hilariously low opening offer.
They did it by getting an AVC writer to write the legal documents.
Let’s hope this leads to them making the Prime Video app less shitty.
Seriously. Even the STARZ app is more intuitive. Or that could just be because they have far less content to sift through….
Just to note, in case anyone was curious, this does NOT include any MGM film or cartoon made before 1986 (unless the rights to said film belong elsewhere, like Bond), as those are still owned by Warner Media/Discovery Warner. That includes stuff like Wizard of Oz, Tom & Jerry, Ben-Hur, Pink Panther cartoons, 2001: A Space Odyssey, etc.
TCM lives to see another day.
It really does feel like that, doesn’t it? I feel like it’s just a matter of time before one of these big moves ends up ending TCM as we know it which will be a sad, sad day.
It’s one of the few cable channels that’s not on autopilot showing all day movies or marathons of a sitcom, and actually still relates to its original goal. Like IFC doesn’t play anything pertaining to indie films anymore; their schedule right now is all day Two and a Half Men. Or Logo, which was launched as a queer-targeted channel, is also just sitcom re-runs that don’t really fit that theme.
IFC was re-running Star Trek (TOS) for a while — wish that was still happening. They still run the occasional Monty Python episode or film, thankfully.
I guess there’s only so many Two and a Half Men ….Wish they’d re-run some of their own original programming, e.g. I’d love to see Brockmire and Stan Against Evil again.
I sadly lost touch with TCM a few years ago after Comcast moved it from regular cable (or expanded basic, whatever they call it) into a pay premium package with some other unrelated stuff I’ve no interest in.I assume that’s more due to Comcast being greedy sods than TCM’s fault.
I bet that means that there also won’t be a rebranding in Vegas to the Amazon Grand. With AI technology! You don’t have to go to the cashier to cash out your chips! You can just leave and the phone app takes care of everything!
I can’t imagine much changing with the Bond rights, what with the Broccoli family still having their veto (no James Bond TV show coming to Amazon Prime anytime soon).
Oh well. I was kinda looking forward to Pink Panther cartoons.
This shit is so fuckin bleak
aMaGoM
the world fucking sucks
EU antitrust tends to be stricter (especially when it comes to American companies), so it’s probably fine. Acquiring MGM is not going to substantially reduce competition or anything like that, in part because MGM has been a mess for years – they went bankrupt in 2010, and have been looking for a buyer ever since.
Back to monopolies and nobody remembers why they are bad. Except my generation, and we’re gonna be gone in 20 years.