With a movie back-catalogue which includes Bond and Rocky, Jeff Bezos’ Amazon will become one of the world’s biggest content owners with its US$8.45 billion deal to by MGM.
The company says it has agreed the purchase for US$6.5 billion and will take on the Hollywood studio’s debt. Even by Amazon standards, it’s a large transaction, only eclipsed by the US$13.7 billion it paid for Whole Foods in 2017.
Amazon – which is looking to raise the stature of its Amazon Prime streaming service – gets a library of more than 4000 films, many of them classics, as well as a TV catalogue which includes The Handmaid’s Tale (pictured) and Vikings.
In a call with shareholders, Bezos is reported to have said the acquisition’s thesis “is really very simple”.
“MGM has a vast, deep catalogue 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.”
Putting the deal together is reported to have taken most of this year, with Amazon also approaching Sony Pictures Entertainment, but was rebuffed, the Wall Street Journal reported. Last March Amazon also agreed to pay US$1.2 billion a season for rights to NFL’s Thursday Night Football for 11 years, it said.