Amazon grows again with the purchase of MGM, history American film company born in 2024 holder of the rights to great sagas such as Rocky and 007.
Amazon has acquired for $8.45 billion Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), a historic film production company that will bring to Prime Video’s catalog a rich collection of films to add to the long list of names that make up the streaming video platform’s library. With an ever-expanding offer, the e-commerce giant’s service is aiming for big numbers.
The area dedicated to Amazon’s entertainment has from the beginning been a relatively small part compared to the size of the entire structure that the company is. Despite this, the company spends billions each year managing the rights to the content hosted on the platform. To this, then, it must be added that a slice of subscribers enjoy free use linked to the Amazon Prime package subscription, without a specific subscription dedicated to viewing. Still, last year alone, more than 175 million users watched Prime Video movies, series and shows, out of 200 million total subscribers. For Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, the deal could be a chance to be exploited: “It’s very exciting and offers so many opportunities for high-quality storytelling.”
Amazon and MGM, the negotiation
Owned by a group of companies, including Anchorage Capital Group, Highland Capital Management and Solus Alternative Asset Management, MGM potentially appeared in the market as early as December 2020. The first information about a possible purchase of Amazon began to circulate in the environment as early as mid-May. For Variety, Hopkins would have led the negotiations that, according to the Wall Street Journal, seemed to be close to conclusion as early as May 24.
Amazon and MGM, how the library changes
With the arrival of MGM titles, Amazon Prime Video will manage to touch a total of about 4,000 movies, to which must be added another 17,000 hours of television content. It will be easier for the platform to carve out a place next to the most famous names in the industry, that is Netflix and Disney Plus with their libraries extremely large and engaging for all types of viewers.
For its part, MGM will have in its dowry two great movie sagas, namely Rocky and James Bond, not to mention some of the most interesting productions in the TV series format such as Vikings and The Handmaid’s Tale. In addition to these successes, there are also many TV shows, The Voice above all, that have spread all over the world with their format, gathering good results in terms of viewers during the numerous sessions.
Amazon and other companies that aim high in entertainment
Amazon is not the only one that, recently, has focused on the acquisition of production companies to increase its range of proposals. Recently, Warner Media and Discovery joined forces to create Disney’s most formidable rival. Both equipped with proprietary streaming services, respectively HBO Max and Discovery Plus, aiming to unify the proposal by making the complete solution even more consistent and appealing to the general public.
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