4 ms·
Could be, but for now their official stand is: The goal of Amazon Studios is to work with Hollywood to turn the best projects into major feature films.
by nreece 15y ago
Could be, but for now their official stand is:
The goal of Amazon Studios is to work with Hollywood
to turn the best projects into major feature films.
- chancho 15y ago"Some of the best ideas may initially look like they're serving the movie and TV industries. Microsoft seemed like a technology supplier to IBM before eating their lunch, and Google did the same thing to Yahoo."
- mediaman 15y agoI agree, and this would be a very typical long-term move by Amazon: they systematically partner with existing incumbents, and then develop a business model that renders them redundant. Book publishing was the first example.
- robryan 15y agoI would say also, with the YC rfs, I think any startup going down that path would be better of not being anti-hollywood as an official line.
- freshhawk 15y agoI agree that just because they work with the studios doesn't mean they don't fit the bill. I think they don't fit because it's boring. It's scaling up and updating of "I'll help you sell your screenplay" newspaper ads. Open to everyone but with predatory terms. Another middleman to the studios. It's not innovative and it's not killing anything.
- kayhi 15y agoThe goal of Amazon is to work with publishers to turn the best books into bestsellers.
- sliverstorm 15y agoThey got to learn the business from the inside first... ;)
- firefoxman1 15y agoBut "Hollywood" is such a broad term. Perhaps their intentions are to work with the "good" or necessary parts of Hollywood like actors, directors, writers, CGI teams, camera crews, sound experts, etc. without the large media companies themselves. It's really been Amazon's core strategy all along: the classic "cut out the middle man."
- jonnathanson 15y agoThis needs more upvotes. Let's stop painting "Hollywood" with a broad brush. What we really mean, when we direct our wrath at "Hollywood," is the studio system. The conglomerates. Etc. Caught up in that system are some truly creative, kind, brilliant, hard-working people. Take writers, for example. I've spent a good portion of my career working with writers. Screenwriters are some of the coolest, geekiest, smartest, craziest, most endearingly awkward people I've ever known. They're not unlike the engineers I've worked with in other capacities, actually. Writing code and writing fiction are obviously very different trades, but the souls of the crafts are very similar.