Amazon’s last major acquisition in 2017 was Whole Foods grocery stores, for $ 13.7 billion (€ 11.2 billion). Four years later, the firm founded by Jeff Bezos fell into glamor and offered itself for 8.45 billion dollars MGM (6.9 billion euros), the famous Metro Goldwyn Mayer. The former Hollywood major with the legendary lion, who produced Let’s sing in the rain, Ben hur or Rocky, mostly owns part of the rights to James Bond.
“MGM, which has nearly a century of cinematic history, complements the work of Amazon Studios, the latter having mainly focused on the production of television show programs.”, explains Amazon in a press release published on Wednesday. “The real financial value of this deal is the full catalog intellectual property treasure, which we plan to reinvent and develop with the talented team at MGM.”, added Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon Studios.
This franchise is indeed an absolutely decisive asset, because it will be a way for Amazon to win new subscribers for its Prime Video streaming package. The broadcast of Agent 007’s latest adventures with Daniel Craig, No Time to Die, continues to be postponed due to the health crisis. The release date of the film, shot in 2019, is now set for October 8, 2021 in the United States.
Talks about the takeover of the firm have been going on for months. The two groups had recently entered into exclusive negotiations, report it Wall Street Journal.
All-round
Amazon has not stopped investing in content despite the pandemic. As the American daily explains, she is currently spending $ 465 million on the first season of a series on The Lord of the Rings. According to the Wall Street Journal, the acquisition of MGM would be an admission that Amazon is failing to produce enough content to meet the demand of its streaming subscribers. The operation comes as major maneuvers have resumed in the area. Disney and its streaming subsidiary Hulu are strengthened by the acquisition of assets from Twentieth Century Fox while ATT and Discovery have decided to merge the activities to boost their on-demand streaming activities via HBO and Discovery +.
Bezos’ company is investing in all directions. She signed an agreement with the National Football League (NFL) to have the right to broadcast for ten years and for $ 1.2 billion a year about fifteen nights of the American football championship on Thursday nights.
In recent years, a company (…) without an official CEO
MGM was, for some years, a company without a head or, at least, without an official CEO; the previous one, Gary Barber, having been sacked in 2018 after starting talks to sell the company to Apple. MGM no longer owns the rights to films shot before 1948, such Gone with the wind, the catalog sold years ago is now the property of Time Warner, a subsidiary of the American telecoms giant AT&T.
The creation of wealth in the sector is not obvious. The announcement of the marriage of AT&T subsidiary WarnerMedia (which also features CNN and HBO) to Discovery comes with financial disaster. AT&T had disbursed, three years ago, 102 billion dollars to buy the assets of Warner, today valued at 43 billion dollars.
AT&T had even had to fight in court against the American competition authorities for the right to buy Warner. Above all, the affair makes the sea snake again plunge into the synergies between container and content, between telecom operators and manufacturers of video or cinematographic content.