Amazon is looking to expand its capitalist girth by acquiring MGM’s library of film and TV titles. As Republican governors across the U.S. have begun opting out of federal unemployment aid in an effort to force people to accept low-paying jobs, Variety reports that Amazon is looking to spend $9 billion to purchase MGM. That may seem like an absurd amount of money to us poor folk, but Amazon recently spent $11 billion on film, TV, and music for its Prime platforms in 2020, so $9 billion is chump change, really. It’s enough to buy over 4,000 movies and 17,000 episodes of television, but it’s not really enough to increase wages for underpaid, overworked employees in Amazon warehouses or the bottles they have to pee in, now is it?
Should Amazon’s latest deal go through, the company will acquire an impressive catalog that includes the James Bond movies, RoboCop, Rocky and Creed, and The Hobbit franchises, along with The Silence Of The Lambs and The Magnificent Seven. MGM’s television library includes classics like In The Heat Of The Night and the Stargate franchise, reality hits Survivor and The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills, and more recent favorites such as Fargo and The Handmaid’s Tale. While the deal would clearly be beneficial for Amazon Prime, which already has a massive streaming library (padded by thousands of obscure/extremely low-budget titles), it raises questions about the future of MGM on home video. The studio has one of the largest collections of film and TV on Blu-ray, featuring numerous older titles and remasters of classics. It seems unlikely that Amazon would continue production of new Blu-rays, and more likely that they’d sell off any existing stock they acquire.
Update [5/26/2021]: Amazon now owns MGM Studios, for the price of $8.45 billion. It’s a big move for the company that seems to own everything now, and the second largest price they’ve paid for an acquisition behind Whole Foods. The studios extensive catalog will be used to bolster Amazon Prime Video, and bring the talents of the historic film maker to Amazon Studios.
“The real financial value behind this deal is the treasure trove of [intellectual property] in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM’s talented team,” Mike Hopkins, senior VP of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, said in announcing the deal. “It’s very exciting and provides so many opportunities for high-quality storytelling.”
86 Comments
My first thought is: Maybe this would end up with a new Stargate tv show?
Oooo. I do trust them to not necessarily cancel things prematurely, or too prematurely unlike Netflix.
In that case, you should be rooting for Showtime to start a new Stargate series.
Eh, I’m still stinging from only two seasons of The Tick.
the best thing Bezos ever did was to renew The Expanse, so who knows?
https://www.gateworld.net/news/2021/05/amanda-tapping-has-been-approached-about-a-new-stargate-series/
As much as I love Amanda Tapping, I kind of think that the world at the end of Stargate Atlantis was so different than ours that I think they might be better off with a reboot or a Next Generation-type thing where all the tech from SG-1 has been lost or something.
It sounds like they’re handing things off to a new main cast, but just bringing in some of the OG characters for support.
Ha, my first thought was with ownership of Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal’s popularity on streamers, maybe bringing Fuller back for the fabled season 4.
So… some Bezos pocket change? Actually, are there any rules there? Is he allowed to buy the company and then just keep the movies privately, for his own viewing pleasure?
Hypothetically he could.The Amazon board might have the power to remove him as chairman, but that doesn’t change the fact that he has control over the company by dint of the voting rights his shares afford him. He could force an election of board members, put out a slate of his own candidates, and vote them all in without a single vote from anyone else and reinstall himself. Of course a part of the reason that Amazon’s shareholders don’t really care that Bezos has that degree of control is that they probably don’t think he would ever spend $9 billion dollars acquiring a gargantuan amount of media content and then decide to not put it to use on Amazon’s platforms.
I was thinking along the lines of Bezos buying the studio himself, rather than Amazon doing it, but you’ve answered my question…There isn’t any kind of law that says “these things are part of our culture and you can’t just buy them all and lock them up”?It would be James Bond villain level villainy to buy all the James Bond films and keep them to yourself.
The thing is, if anyone were going to do that, I don’t think it would be an ultra rich guy like Bezos. You have to be a bit more like Martin Shrkeli (remember his Wu Tang album on a much smaller scale), who’s sliminess ultimately undercut his riches.Put differently, you don’t get to be worth over a hundred billion dollars without inheriting it by being the type of ding-dong that would be willing to blow $9 billion on a media collection you intend to keep private.Say whatever you want about Bezos. He’s evil, he’s bad, he’s exploitive, sure fine, let’s stipulate that all that’s true for the sake of argument. The fact is that Bezos is always the smartest guy in any room he is in and is really fucking good at running a business and while Amazon’s had some errors on balance Bezos makes smarter investments in his business than pretty much anyone else on the planet.
I would vote for him over Zuckerberg or Musk any-day. Hmmm… him vs. Dorsey… interesting. One of those fuckers is gonna run in ‘24, trust me.
Oh, agreed. I wasn’t really suggesting it would happen but it’s interesting that it could.Particularly since, to me, the headline seemed to imply that 9 billion was a lot but, it’s a small amount to that guy.I tend to agree about Bezos. He’s done it, he saw what could happen and he made it. I don’t begrudge him his success. And if a particular country has terrible labour laws or fails to tax him/Amazon properly… well, relying on people’s ethics is kinda why we have those laws. Or should have them. I blame the government if someone is allowed to openly run a sweatshop. Having said that, I am now trying to buy more locally (which is fucking annoying compared to Amazon! 🙂 ).Never know though, he might go all Bill Gates altruism on us. Remember when we all used to hate that guy? Poor fella’s down to like only 100 billion now ;(
one wonders if JB has an evil bucket list of shit to do just to see if he can prevent or survive the pitchforks from the lesser beings he generously allows to share his biome.
Plus as chairman he has a fiduciary duty to protect the financial interests of his shareholders. So the board can’t force him to make any single decision, and they can’t really complain if he makes some bad decisions here and there (as you state, they bought shares knowing that he holds a controlling stake). But if he did something completely unreasonable (from a profits and losses perspective, obviously not ethically), they could sue him. Since the purchase was made by Amazon and not Bezos personally, he could also run into tax issues if he were to use that purchase primarily for personal gain.
No, he couldn’t. Jeff Bezos didn’t buy the studio, Amazon did. He can WANT to show the films exclusively in his bathroom, but Amazon’s board will stop him. Amazon’s money bought the studio, not Jeff’s. Jeff may run Amazon, but he still answers to the board and the shareholders.
Incorrect.At most Amazon’s Board can be a minor speed bump that might slow Bezos by a few weeks. Sure they could oust him, initially, but then Jeff Bezos would take off his chairman hat, and put on his shareholder hat and use his super-duper shares that give him a controlling voting interest despite having a minority ownership interest, replace the Board with cronies, and proceed to do whatever he wanted to anyways.
Well, if Bezos bought the studio he could do whatever he wanted to to with the movies. BUT, it looks like Amazon bought the studio, so the company will do what’s best for the shareholders (aka, stream them on Amazon Prime).
Counterpoint on the Blu Ray Library. This would force anyone who doesn’t want to subscribe to prime to head to Amazon as the only place to buy those blu rays. MGM/UA has been holding onto those 4k disc releases of the Bond movies for nearly 2 years now and you know that Amazon would be able to milk fans and screw over other distributors for every dime.
I think they’d come under quite a bit of anti-trust pressure if they tried to do that though.
Anti-trust law in America has very little bite to it. They might get fined a trivial amount.
Antitrust Regulator: “Um, excuse me, um sir….technically if you purchase your only competitor, that is um technically a monopoly, which is ah, supposed to be illegal…”
American CEO: “Shut up pencil-dick”Regulator: “Ah yes sir, sorry sir”
The alternate universe you live in sounds delightful.
I could see them charging a “Prime only” discount for the set that screws over other distributors. I highly doubt Bond will come to Movies Anywhere anytime soon. (I have 2 bonds on Itunes and 2 more on Vudu and would love them all to be on all platforms)
Lol, you’re funny…
I am guessing they will succeed. Of all the things that annoy me about Amazon or in general them buying this is like sure whatever.
I’m just wondering if we’d start seeing James Bond day-and-date on the streaming platform along with the theater…
can I get a lion shipped to my door?
Maybe, but it’ll probably be exempt from two-day shipping.
I’d accept three-day shipping just this once.
more like two day shi**ing amirite!
Shipping? Shilling? Shimming? It’s shipping, isn’t it? I bet it’s shipping.
Shilling is a bad word in my house (oh I said it!) and not a respectable profession for any lion to have. NIMBYZoo
Gotta give them the extra time for the amount of bodies they have to clean up when mailing a healthy lion.
Yes, but I’ll get that $1 credit toward future digital purchases!
What the fuck was that?
If you choose the Amazon Fridays option, you get TWO LIONS! Much better deal.
Yes but only for art’s sake.
You’ll have to wait until Amazon acquires Joe Exotic’s assets first.
Has Bezos ever even watched a good old MGM Musical?Does he know the difference between Astaire or Kelly or Reynolds and Miller or Mickey and Judy?
Irrelevant as MGM itself does not own the rights to any of the good old stuff. I think everything before 1986 has been sold off to one group or another.
MGM has changed hands numerous times over its nearly century-long history. Its current iteration is a far cry from its dominance during the Golden Age of Hollywood: Aside from James Bond, MGM sorely lacks franchises. However, it has a deep library that includes 4,000 films and 17,000 hours of television, including titles like “Silence of the Lambs” and “Rocky.”—-Indie Wire on Pending Sale
Originally the Pink Panther, James Bond and Rocky franchises were part of United Artists – sold in 1981 to MGM thanks to Michael Cimino’s disaster Heaven’s Gate. So James Bond wasn’t a MGM franchise to begin with.
Despite the library I don’t see how they could exploit other franchises as Handmaid’s Tale except maybe mixing it with RoboCop? They don’t have full control over Bond because that’s in the hands of British EON. As others mentioned Stargate is probably their best option to rework.
But Rocky was 1976, so not included. Or do they just mean the character of Rocky?
I took it to mean Rocky 5 (1990) and Rocky Balboa (2006), but that’s just a guess.
Right. Basically, Ted Turner bought all of MGM, and then sold off the production and distribution side of things a short time later, while holding on to the rights to all of the previous movies, so that he could use them as programming for his cable channels. So then, when Turner was bought out by (Time)Warner, those rights went to Warner Bros.
That doesn’t matter, because Ted Turner did when he bought up MGM’s pre-1986 film library for TCM!
Amazon buying MGM is a little funny because MGM’s catalog is so vast that it’s owned by, like, 5 different companies now.
Well, yeah, they don’t own anything MGM made pre 1986. Sold it to Turner and now it’s part of Warner Bros.
So, while the list cited in the article is longer than I expected it to be of things I’ve actually heard of, the fact is MGM’s library that’d be for sale is only a few decades old and not truly that expansive.While they’ve made some impressive inroads into TV in recent years, for a while MGM was little more than a letterhead that made the occasional James Bond movie and shitty, direct-to-video sequel of its more recent output.
Except that in recent years Sony had more to do with James Bond’s financing and distribution than MGM but their deal expired in 2015.
Sure. Because up until recently, with their new TV output, MGM was basically just a letterhead and a library.
Whoo hoo! Mac and Me was MGM. We could all stream it over and over and Paul Rudd can take a break from talk shows.
These kind of numbers drive me to piracy.
“Amazon is trying to buy MGM for $9 billion”Trying? What’s 9 billion to Amazon? If Amazon wanted to get it done fast this story could’ve easily been “Amazon just bought MGM for $12 billion.”
I find it amazing that MGM is still around. They keep on selling off bits and pieces of their inventory yet still keep on existing. How do you keep on making Bond films that make over a billion dollars yet keep running your company into the ground nearly every decade??
“How do you keep on making Bond films that make over a billion dollars
yet keep running your company into the ground nearly every decade??”I don’t know what the answer is, but I’m willing to bet it involved a lot of MBAs.
Because they own only 49% of it. British EON owns 51%. And MGM didn’t have enough money for some time so Sony co-financed and distributed Bond. Bond was originally an United Artists/ EON franchise. UA was ruined by Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate and sold to MGM. If James Bond were a franchise by a classic Hollywood Studio it would be dead for decades.
MGM’s constant financial peril also has this bad habit of fucking with Bond production – both Skyfall and Goldeneye were delayed due to an MGM crisis.
Indiewire as a story on it (https://www.indiewire.com/2021/05/amazon-mgm-wizard-of-oz-gone-with-the-wind-1234640259/) — MGM kept getting bought and sold by Kirk Kerkorian, who would buy up smaller studio and production companies for their film and television libraries. The story says MGM’s library owns over half of the Hollywood studio films made after 1986.Kerkorian’s gone now, but for a streaming service like Amazon Prime Video? Their library of films made in the last half-century is a gold mine….
“Ars Gratia Artis” indeed
And now Bezos owns the Apprentice and all its unseen footage….
And raises the question: would Bezos expose Trump, or just use the outtakes to leverage Trump?
Hope he uses the footage to fucking bury Dipshit Donnie
I imagine it’s going in a few secure vaults with “Shut the fuck up, Donnie” written on them.And then if Donnie doesn’t shut the fuck up the vault will open.
Is there much point to leveraging Trump at this point? He’s personally responsible for millions of dollars in loans that he probably can’t pay off that come good either this year or next.
I meant more for power, favors, etc. God forbid Trump get elected again, but if he did, Bezos could use the leverage to, say, get the feds off his ass about anti-trust or labor stuff.
Yeah, but how many of Trump’s supporters will stop supporting him if Bezos does release footage of him saying racist, sexist, ableist, etc. statements laced with expletives? I can guarantee you that every single Trumper will either agree with those statements or rationalize them by saying that Trump no longer holds those beliefs.At this point, I don’t know that anything short of live footage of Kim Jong-un rogering Trump will cause him to lose supporters. And even then I’m sure a lot of them would write it off as a deepfake and stick with him.
I thought this seemed really cheap but apparently MGM Resorts is a completely separate company
As someone who does have Prime, I’m looking forward to “Logan’s Run” and other MGM 70’s films being made available.“Corvette Summer” and “The Travelling Executioner” time, baby!
Pretty sure Turner got all those. That sale happened in ‘86 so MGM really only has everything released after (and stuff from Orion which they bought when they went under.)
That’s pretty awesome then, although Turner needs to make a lot more of those films available.
Logan’s Run airs on TCM about every 8 months. I believe it’s airing this week (or it aired last week).
But when can I see “Corvette Summer”?
Once again, I have to ask: Which chucklefuck at Apple is letting these opportunities pass them by?
What’s up with the lion in the header? It’s a CG monstrosity.
It shouldn’t. Turner/Warner Media owns the pre-1986 MGM film library and the pre-1986 MGM/United Artists libraries; and then sold the Culver City studio lot to Lorimar, which was bought by Time Warner who in turn sold it to Sony Pictures. The rest of the company remained intact.
We have ZERO anti-trust enforcement left in this country, and really haven’t for 40 years. It should terrify us all.
They are also in the process of buying Netflix, and nearly all of Saturn’s glorious rings.
oh gross.
which already has a massive streaming library (padded by thousands of obscure/extremely low-budget titles) Not to brag, but two of those obscure, extremely low budget movies are mine.
Is MGM really worth 8 billion? Bond is probably worth but MGM doesn’t really have much else.
“capitalist girth”