Amazon completed its $8.45 billion acquisition of MGM, which was permitted after regulators in the U.S. and Europe declined to challenge the deal. MGM and its 4,000 films, 17,000 TV episodes, and sufficient pipeline of future entertainment will join the Prime Video and Amazon Studios family. 🤭
It also means that James Bond, Fargo, The Handmaid’s Tale, and other iconic film and TV franchises will belong to Amazon. What they’ll do about existing arrangements with streaming services or distributors is unknown. However, the sky is the limit. 🌤️
Many of MGM’s thousands of films and TV shows will be added to Prime Video, Amazon’s streaming service which comes as a courtesy with Prime. However, the public has speculated that future MGM Studios and Amazon Studios releases might have day and date releases. In other words — the studios might decide to release films in theaters and streaming services on the same day.
The acquisition also paints a stark reality of consolidation trends in the business of “big media.” Disney‘s controversial acquisition of 21st Century Fox marked the early makings of this consolidation, but AT&T’s decision to spin off WarnerMedia in a merger deal with Discovery underscores the prevalence of the trend. 🚨
Almost all of these acquisitions have a few critical ingredients: the emergence of streaming services, the need for larger content libraries, added scale for film and TV production, and multi-billion dollar M&A activity showing the amount value and IP involved in these transactions.
On the whole, it’s hard to know where this consolidation might go after MGM-Amazon. That being said, it’s easy to know what to expect from Amazon after this acquisition. Amazon is trying to be an “Everything Giant.”