10 ms·

Amazon Nears Deal to Buy Hollywood Studio MGM

102 points by lunchbreak 5y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
> Amazon.com Inc. is nearing a deal to buy the Hollywood studio MGM Holdings for almost $9 billion including debt, said people familiar with the matter, a pact that would turn a film operation founded in the silent era into a streaming asset for the e-commerce giant. What surprises me is that at $9 Billion, why hasn’t it been acquired by now? Right now, video streaming is pretty much a solved problem, and it is content that differentiates one service from another. If you are an Internet giant, $9 Billion seems like a pocket change to get access to a huge catalog.
- andrewstuart 5y ago
  Good point - you'd think Netflix would have been buying this stuff up.
  - agustif 5y ago
    how many originals can they pump out at 9B though?
    - Kye 5y ago
      Owning proven stuff is probably a more reliable investment than hoping one of your darts in the wall develops the cultural cachet of any of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer_franchises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer_f... How many Netflix productions come even close for all the tens of billions they've poured into it? Reliable names mean customer retention.
      - agogdog 5y ago
        Honestly that doesn't seem all that great for $9bn.
      - jonny_eh 5y ago
        As attractive as catalog content can seem, it's not the reason why new customers join, and stay with, a streaming service. New content is King.
        echelon 5y ago
        Tell that to the owners of The Office. Peacock making anything new and relevant?
        sushid 5y ago
        Is Peacock the embodiment of streaming success? For every Office and Friends there are 100s of duds that people just don't care much about after the final season.
        jonny_eh 5y ago
        > Tell that to the owners of The Office. Tell that to Netflix, which hardly lost any subscribers when they lost their most popular catalog show.
- dageshi 5y ago
  The biggest IP is Bond and the Broccoli family own 50% of it and have creative control over the movies (and whether or not it can be a tv series). I imagine that's the complication, you buy MGM but don't really have full control over the crown jewel so to speak.
crmrc114 5y ago
I just want Jeff bezos to save Stargate like he saved the expanse. I can only hope that Amazon will protect The Stargate franchise from coming to the same fate as Star wars and Star trek.
- slakrems 5y ago
  They will probably ruin it with feminism just like the rest of them.
- space_ghost 5y ago
  The Expanse was cancelled and then saved by Amazon within a year, Stargate has essentially been a dead property for 10 years.
  - schraeds 5y ago
    Stargate Origins came out in 2018
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    There is a difference between saving a show and saving a franchise. The Star Trek movies saved the franchise which lead to TNG, DS9 and Voyager, they didn’t save the original series tho. I only hope is that they won’t turn Stargate into Discovery like show.
    - fareesh 5y ago
      Chevron 7 locked "waaaaaaaaaa"
      - saghm 5y ago
        If they do make a new series, I think I care more about Walter getting a cameo than literally anyone else from the original show
      - deadmutex 5y ago
        Chevron 8 locked: https://youtu.be/z72GiUz2VI8?t=104 https://youtu.be/z72GiUz2VI8?t=104 https://youtu.be/QRJCpRPpT9U?t=250 https://youtu.be/QRJCpRPpT9U?t=250
Kye 5y ago
Previous discussion from when it was reportedly rather than near: "Amazon is reportedly negotiating to acquire MGM for about $9B" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27194167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27194167
Workaccount2 5y ago
So when are we going to break up Amazon?
- ashneo76 5y ago
  This purchase should be illegal yesterday
  - echelon 5y ago
    Monopolists are going to downvote you, but they're wrong. These megacorps shouldn't be allowed to enter fifteen different industries and kill off the incumbents. This is absurd. Amazon is internet services infra, shopping, logistics, fulfillment, consumer hardware, networking, a payments stack, publisher, grocery store, and now a fucking entertainment company. They track us, turn us into non-owner subscribers, and prevent us from building companies that can compete with their scale. We're eternally subservient. It's not healthy for innovation! Break up Apple. Break up Amazon. Break up Google.
    - walshemj 5y ago
      But all those rich news paper /media moguls get a pass then
    - ipsum2 5y ago
      > Amazon is internet services infra, shopping, logistics, fulfillment, consumer hardware, networking, a payments stack, publisher, grocery store, and now a fucking entertainment company. How many of these do they have a monopoly on? Keep in mind, the definition of monopoly is: "the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service."
      - echelon 5y ago
        They can enter new industries well below market cost and destroy all of the existing businesses. They then soak up everything. In the end, everything becomes Amazon. They did it to open source, bookstores, retail. Maybe you don't see the end goal, where every restaurant is Amazon and you rent your home from Jeff Bezos? Maybe you're not worried and you trust these people? Maybe you don't want to compete and you just want to be an employee? I don't know. But this is wrong. You can't compete with this, you're forced to work with it. It decreases degrees of freedom and angle of attack for everyone else. From Amazon's perspective, their moat becomes an ocean. That's hard to swim in.
MattGrommes 5y ago
What does Amazon get if they buy a Hollywood studio, besides the content library? Is MGM just a holder of copyright for various popular franchises or does the company actually make things?
- mathattack 5y ago
  Strategic power against other content creators. They need some can’t miss content similar to HBO/Disney/Netflix.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  You’ve just answered your own question. A huge catalog of classics as well as franchises that can be developed into new shows and movies. The Bond franchise alone probably is worth half of what this deal is gonna cost.
  - slg 5y ago
    >The Bond franchise alone probably is worth half of what this deal is gonna cost. Probably not. MGM doesn't "own" Bond in the same way that Disney owns Star Wars. There are complicating factors to the Bond movies that reduce the brand's value to MGM and any new prospective owner.
    - johannes1234321 5y ago
      Right, Bond is controlled by the Broccoli family (Eon Productions)
WheelsAtLarge 5y ago
Amazon tends to beat the creative parts out of the companies they buy. I bet it's related to the financial efficiencies they apply to them. Creativity is expensive without any guaranteed return. Most of the new prime video content, that I've seen, seems to have a very safe tone to it. Yes, it's new but it's safe. No one will be surprised or insulted by it. It starts to get boring very quickly. As new owners, I hope they don't have such a hard hand that they ruin the brand.
- Judgmentality 5y ago
  > Most of the new prime video content, that I've seen, seems to have a very safe tone to it. Yes, it's new but it's safe. No one will be surprised or insulted by it. It starts to get boring very quickly. Overall I agree with your point and I'm extremely confident Amazon buying MGM will completely and utterly fuck over any creative potential that company has (similar to what's happening with AT&T and HBO), but - if you're looking for something good to watch on Prime, take a look at Invincible. I was actually about to give up on it and then I got to the end of the first episode and I binged the rest of the show in less than a day. It's the first time in years I've looked forward to the next season of a show that isn't a comedy.
  - yocheckitdawg 5y ago
    If you like Invincible, you should The Boys a try. It is fantastic, great cast, great cinematography, and great source material which is adapted in such a way that it is honestly better than the original comics it is based on.
- subsubzero 5y ago
  Agree, I think the same thing happened when Disney acquired Fox film studios. Disney is notorious for low pay and alot of the fox execs/creatives were extremely worried after the acquisition, same thing going on with with Amazon/MGM. I know amazon paid a fortune for Tolkien's Silmarillion TV rights and we haven't seen a single thing about that situation. My big worry is amazon screws around with the Bond franchise and ruins it, it seems to be doing extremely well with top directors and large blockbuster returns.
skissane 5y ago
What I don't understand is why Netflix hasn't been doing this already – use their vast wealth to buy some legacy entertainment companies. Gives you both the opportunity to get their legacy content library into your streaming service, and also existing stories to use as a basis for new content (Disney seems to be pretty good at doing the later recently)
- Kye 5y ago
  They're betting on filling 5000 niches hunting for the next Stranger Things-level breakout hit.
anaganisk 5y ago
So Tom and Jerry gonna be available on Prime now?

102 points by lunchbreak 5y ago

> Amazon.com Inc. is nearing a deal to buy the Hollywood studio MGM Holdings for almost $9 billion including debt, said people familiar with the matter, a pact that would turn a film operation founded in the silent era into a streaming asset for the e-commerce giant. What surprises me is that at $9 Billion, why hasn’t it been acquired by now? Right now, video streaming is pretty much a solved problem, and it is content that differentiates one service from another. If you are an Internet giant, $9 Billion seems like a pocket change to get access to a huge catalog.

andrewstuart 5y ago
Good point - you'd think Netflix would have been buying this stuff up.
- agustif 5y ago
  how many originals can they pump out at 9B though?
  - Kye 5y ago
    Owning proven stuff is probably a more reliable investment than hoping one of your darts in the wall develops the cultural cachet of any of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer_franchises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer_f... How many Netflix productions come even close for all the tens of billions they've poured into it? Reliable names mean customer retention.
    - agogdog 5y ago
      Honestly that doesn't seem all that great for $9bn.
    - jonny_eh 5y ago
      As attractive as catalog content can seem, it's not the reason why new customers join, and stay with, a streaming service. New content is King.
      - echelon 5y ago
        Tell that to the owners of The Office. Peacock making anything new and relevant?
        sushid 5y ago
        Is Peacock the embodiment of streaming success? For every Office and Friends there are 100s of duds that people just don't care much about after the final season.
        jonny_eh 5y ago
        > Tell that to the owners of The Office. Tell that to Netflix, which hardly lost any subscribers when they lost their most popular catalog show.
dageshi 5y ago
The biggest IP is Bond and the Broccoli family own 50% of it and have creative control over the movies (and whether or not it can be a tv series). I imagine that's the complication, you buy MGM but don't really have full control over the crown jewel so to speak.

crmrc114 5y ago

I just want Jeff bezos to save Stargate like he saved the expanse. I can only hope that Amazon will protect The Stargate franchise from coming to the same fate as Star wars and Star trek.

slakrems 5y ago
They will probably ruin it with feminism just like the rest of them.
space_ghost 5y ago
The Expanse was cancelled and then saved by Amazon within a year, Stargate has essentially been a dead property for 10 years.
- schraeds 5y ago
  Stargate Origins came out in 2018
- dogma1138 5y ago
  There is a difference between saving a show and saving a franchise. The Star Trek movies saved the franchise which lead to TNG, DS9 and Voyager, they didn’t save the original series tho. I only hope is that they won’t turn Stargate into Discovery like show.
  - fareesh 5y ago
    Chevron 7 locked "waaaaaaaaaa"
    - saghm 5y ago
      If they do make a new series, I think I care more about Walter getting a cameo than literally anyone else from the original show
    - deadmutex 5y ago
      Chevron 8 locked: https://youtu.be/z72GiUz2VI8?t=104 https://youtu.be/z72GiUz2VI8?t=104 https://youtu.be/QRJCpRPpT9U?t=250 https://youtu.be/QRJCpRPpT9U?t=250

Kye 5y ago

Previous discussion from when it was reportedly rather than near: "Amazon is reportedly negotiating to acquire MGM for about $9B" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27194167 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27194167

Workaccount2 5y ago

So when are we going to break up Amazon?

ashneo76 5y ago
This purchase should be illegal yesterday
- echelon 5y ago
  Monopolists are going to downvote you, but they're wrong. These megacorps shouldn't be allowed to enter fifteen different industries and kill off the incumbents. This is absurd. Amazon is internet services infra, shopping, logistics, fulfillment, consumer hardware, networking, a payments stack, publisher, grocery store, and now a fucking entertainment company. They track us, turn us into non-owner subscribers, and prevent us from building companies that can compete with their scale. We're eternally subservient. It's not healthy for innovation! Break up Apple. Break up Amazon. Break up Google.
  - walshemj 5y ago
    But all those rich news paper /media moguls get a pass then
  - ipsum2 5y ago
    > Amazon is internet services infra, shopping, logistics, fulfillment, consumer hardware, networking, a payments stack, publisher, grocery store, and now a fucking entertainment company. How many of these do they have a monopoly on? Keep in mind, the definition of monopoly is: "the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service."
    - echelon 5y ago
      They can enter new industries well below market cost and destroy all of the existing businesses. They then soak up everything. In the end, everything becomes Amazon. They did it to open source, bookstores, retail. Maybe you don't see the end goal, where every restaurant is Amazon and you rent your home from Jeff Bezos? Maybe you're not worried and you trust these people? Maybe you don't want to compete and you just want to be an employee? I don't know. But this is wrong. You can't compete with this, you're forced to work with it. It decreases degrees of freedom and angle of attack for everyone else. From Amazon's perspective, their moat becomes an ocean. That's hard to swim in.

MattGrommes 5y ago

What does Amazon get if they buy a Hollywood studio, besides the content library? Is MGM just a holder of copyright for various popular franchises or does the company actually make things?

mathattack 5y ago
Strategic power against other content creators. They need some can’t miss content similar to HBO/Disney/Netflix.
dogma1138 5y ago
You’ve just answered your own question. A huge catalog of classics as well as franchises that can be developed into new shows and movies. The Bond franchise alone probably is worth half of what this deal is gonna cost.
- slg 5y ago
  >The Bond franchise alone probably is worth half of what this deal is gonna cost. Probably not. MGM doesn't "own" Bond in the same way that Disney owns Star Wars. There are complicating factors to the Bond movies that reduce the brand's value to MGM and any new prospective owner.
  - johannes1234321 5y ago
    Right, Bond is controlled by the Broccoli family (Eon Productions)

WheelsAtLarge 5y ago

Amazon tends to beat the creative parts out of the companies they buy. I bet it's related to the financial efficiencies they apply to them. Creativity is expensive without any guaranteed return. Most of the new prime video content, that I've seen, seems to have a very safe tone to it. Yes, it's new but it's safe. No one will be surprised or insulted by it. It starts to get boring very quickly. As new owners, I hope they don't have such a hard hand that they ruin the brand.

Judgmentality 5y ago
> Most of the new prime video content, that I've seen, seems to have a very safe tone to it. Yes, it's new but it's safe. No one will be surprised or insulted by it. It starts to get boring very quickly. Overall I agree with your point and I'm extremely confident Amazon buying MGM will completely and utterly fuck over any creative potential that company has (similar to what's happening with AT&T and HBO), but - if you're looking for something good to watch on Prime, take a look at Invincible. I was actually about to give up on it and then I got to the end of the first episode and I binged the rest of the show in less than a day. It's the first time in years I've looked forward to the next season of a show that isn't a comedy.
- yocheckitdawg 5y ago
  If you like Invincible, you should The Boys a try. It is fantastic, great cast, great cinematography, and great source material which is adapted in such a way that it is honestly better than the original comics it is based on.
subsubzero 5y ago
Agree, I think the same thing happened when Disney acquired Fox film studios. Disney is notorious for low pay and alot of the fox execs/creatives were extremely worried after the acquisition, same thing going on with with Amazon/MGM. I know amazon paid a fortune for Tolkien's Silmarillion TV rights and we haven't seen a single thing about that situation. My big worry is amazon screws around with the Bond franchise and ruins it, it seems to be doing extremely well with top directors and large blockbuster returns.

skissane 5y ago

What I don't understand is why Netflix hasn't been doing this already – use their vast wealth to buy some legacy entertainment companies. Gives you both the opportunity to get their legacy content library into your streaming service, and also existing stories to use as a basis for new content (Disney seems to be pretty good at doing the later recently)

Kye 5y ago
They're betting on filling 5000 niches hunting for the next Stranger Things-level breakout hit.

anaganisk 5y ago

So Tom and Jerry gonna be available on Prime now?