MGM Studios Has Been Purchased By Amazon in $8 Billion Deal

A major deal that would mark the absorption of one of the golden age Hollywood film studios into a modern day media conglomerate has just gone through, in today’s historic announcement. One of Hollywood’s oldest studios, MGM, which declared bankruptcy a decade ago, has been trying to sell their film and television libraries, and according to CNN, Amazon has just purchased the entire studio.

Amazon reportedly spent over $8 billion to buy all of MGM Studio’s holdings. Amazon Studios now owns, or at least partially owns, MGM’s major movie franchises like James Bond, Stargate, Legally Blonde, Robocop, The Pink Panther, as well as the Rocky and Creed movie series. Amazon of course acquired several classic MGM’s movies like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, and The Silence of the Lambs as well. CNN speculates that the reason Amazon wanted to buy MGM is because they wanted the highly profitable James Bond franchise. However despite purchasing all of MGM, Eon Pictures still has partial control over the James Bond franchise.

Amazon of course also now owns all of MGM’s television shows. According to NBC this includes the extremely popular shows Handmaid’s Tale, Fargo, Shark Tank, Survivor, The Real Housewives and also Vikings. It is believed that many of these MGM movies and television shows will be appearing on Amazon’s streaming service Amazon Prime in the near future.

Jeff Bezos said about this major announcement,”The acquisitions thesis here is really very simple: MGM has a vast, deep catalog of much beloved intellectual property, and with the talented people at MGM and the talented people at Amazon Studios, we can reimagine and develop that IP for the 21st century.”