Amazon.com is apparently preparing a billion-dollar acquisition to strengthen its streaming service “Prime Video”: According to several media reports, the online retailer is in talks about an acquisition of the legendary Hollywood studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).
Roland Lindner
Business correspondent in New York.
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The New York Times puts the possible purchase price at nine billion dollars. There it says that Apple had also considered buying MGM, but came to the conclusion that the studio was only worth six billion dollars. MGM is best known for the "James Bond" film series, whose latest episode "No Time to Die" is on hold due to the Corona crisis. It was supposed to come out in April 2020, now the launch in American cinemas is scheduled for this October.
MGM has a library of around 4000 movies and many well-known television shows such as "The Handmaid's Tale".
The film studio can look back on a glorious, but also eventful history.
It was created in 1924 when the New York cinema operator Marcus Loew merged his production company Metro with the two studios Goldwyn and Mayer.
In the thirties it rose to become the most famous Hollywood address.
It later ran into trouble and was repeatedly sold, filing for bankruptcy in 2010.
Since then it has been majority owned by the New York hedge fund Anchorage Capital.
It has been known for several months that Anchorage is considering selling MGM.
For Amazon, MGM would be the second largest acquisition in its history after the Whole Foods grocery chain. The group has recently invested a lot in its video service and bought rights to popular films such as “The Prince from Zamunda 2”. He sees the platform as an important vehicle to make his customer loyalty program “Prime”, which has more than 200 million subscribers, more attractive.