Jeff Bezos' Amazon is getting ready to pay $9 billion for MGM Holdings, the Hollywood studio that brought the world James Bond.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon's long-rumored plans to buy MGM have taken a big step forward, with a $9 billion deal that will be one of the e-commerce giant's biggest acquisitions. If the deal goes through, Amazon will become the official owner of MGM by the end of this week.
MGM, one of the original "Big Five" studios of Hollywood's golden age alongside RKO Radio Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, and Warner was established in 1924 and is a hallmark of Hollywood as we know it today.
The tech behemoth has long been rumored to be a top suitor for the studio, which emerged from bankruptcy in 2010. Anchorage Capital, led by Kevin Ulrich, a former Goldman Sachs executive who chairs the studio's board of directors and is said to be spearheading the transaction, is MGM's largest shareholder. MGM reportedly enlisted Morgan Stanley and LionTree LLC to assist with a sale in December 2020.
Since Gary Barber was fired as CEO in 2018 at Ulrich's behest, the studio has been without a chief. Instead, reality television mogul Mark Burnett oversees the studio's TV unit, while Michael De Luca took over as head of feature film in January 2020.
If a deal goes forward, Amazon's Prime Video streaming service will have access to MGM's vast catalog, which includes over 4,000 titles and 17,000 hours of television.
Amazon will also have ownership of James Bond, which is widely regarded as the industry's most lucrative untapped brand. After 2015's "Spectre," Sony's distribution deal expired, sparking a bidding war between Sony, Universal, Warner Bros., and Fox - as well as then-upstart Amazon and a struggling Apple - for the property.
Eventually, a distribution path was devised, with MGM handling domestic distribution and Universal handling international distribution under a joint venture called United Artists Releasing.
If Amazon's Prime Video streaming services were already strong, acquiring MGM would only strengthen them more.
