Why Amazon's Acquisition Of MGM Is Such A Big Deal
Another massive acquisition has just taken place, as the goliath Amazon has swallowed up yet another company: the 97-year-old Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, commonly known as MGM, for $8.45 billion, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
This marks Amazon's second largest purchase ever, only beaten by their purchase of Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.4 billion. To put this purchase in context, Disney paid about $4 billion in its purchases of both Star Wars and Marvel. This one is worth more than both of those purchases, combined. It's also much bigger than many of Amazon's other purchases, beating out those of game streaming platform Twitch ($970 million), home security company Ring ($839 million), audiobook platform Audible ($300 million), as well as the film and TV database IMDb ($55 million) combined.
Why such the hefty price tag? Most likely, it's because MGM has a ton of extremely valuable franchises, including James Bond, the Rocky and Creed movies, The Pink Panther, Legally Blonde, and more, including over 4,000 movies, as well as a ton of TV shows. Now that all of these are under the control of Jeff Bezos, here are a few reasons why this big deal between the companies will soon be such a big deal for you.
The acquisition could mean a lot more movies coming to Amazon Prime Video
One of the benefits included with an Amazon Prime subscription is access to streaming from a library of movies and TV shows, just like Netflix or Hulu. The acquisition likely means that subscribers will be seeing a lot more, if not all, of MGM's properties reach the platform, including "The Hobbit" trilogy, "Stargate," "Hannibal," and of course, the many entries of the previously mentioned franchises such as James Bond and Rocky.
On the other hand, it also might mean that these movies and shows might not be on other platforms for much longer, if Amazon decides to retain exclusive streaming rights to them. It's also possible that we might see more Prime Originals, featuring characters or concepts from these properties, come directly to the streaming service.
However, it's also worth noting that preexisting deals with certain properties will prevent Amazon from doing anything it wants with some of them. The 007 franchise, for instance, has a less clear-cut situation regarding ownership: the Broccoli family co-own James Bond, and have the final say over all Bond developments (via Insider). So, for example, Amazon would need their approval if they wanted to have an upcoming 007 film skip theaters and hit Prime Video right away.
Nonetheless, it's a huge development that will have unknown implications for future films and TV shows for years to come. With many highly anticipated MGM movies planned to release this year, including "Candyman," "The Addams Family 2" and "House of Gucci," we'll just have to see whether Amazon's purchase affects their release.