Amazon has officially sealed the deal to acquire Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) according to the joint media statement released by both companies. True to the rumours, Amazon will be paying USD 8.45 billion to purchase MGM once the deal is completed.
MGM is well-known throughout the world as one of the biggest film studios in Hollywood. There are plenty of world-famous film franchises and characters under its name too such as James Bond, Creed, Stargate, Tomb Raider, Robocop, Rocky, Creed, The Pink Panther, and many more.
Altogether, MGM has more than 4,000 film titles and 17,000 TV shows under its wings. Hence, it is not surprising to see why Amazon, which also operates the Amazon Prime streaming service, are more than willing to fork out such a huge sum of money to acquire the movie studio which has been around for almost 100 years old.
In fact, the Senior Vice President of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, Mike Hopkins has said in today’s statement that “the real financial value behind this deal is the treasure trove of IP in the deep catalogue”. Furthermore, he also stated that Amazon will be working with MGM to “reimagine and develop” them as well.
In many ways, the new acquisition is yet another sign of how the streaming era is taking over Hollywood by storm. Aside from the imminent union of Amazon Prime and MGM contents, other Hollywood studios that already dabbled deep into streaming services are Paramount Studios with Paramount+ and Warner Bros through HBO Max (or HBO GO in Malaysia).
Of course, there are also Walt Disney Studios together with 20th Century Fox that are now under the same roof and are attached to Disney+ which is coming to Malaysia as Disney+ Hotstar this June. It is still too early to know though whether MGM would be able to make Amazon Prime more attractive to users out there.
(Source: Amazon.)
