Amazon’s $8.5bn deal to purchase MGM, the Hollywood studio behind James Bond, The Handmaid’s Story and Gone With the Wind, has secured it the rights to a century’s value of TV and movie titles that the streaming big intends to take advantage of with a wave of remakes, reimaginings and spin-offs.
The deal to purchase the 97-year-old Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which has an immense library of 4,000 movie titles and 17,000 hours of TV programming, is designed to supercharge Amazon’s content material pipeline, which is the lifeblood of any competitor within the international battle for streaming supremacy.
Because the streaming wars have intensified, new entrants – resembling Disney+, Sky, Comcast’s Peacock, and WarnerMedia’s HBO Max – are more and more refusing to license their very own crown-jewel exhibits and movies to rivals, in an effort to gasoline their very own streaming companies.
Amazon has not pursued an original-content technique within the heavyweight method that Netflix has. Simply 3% of its 41,000 hours of TV exhibits and movies are originals or owned content material, in contrast with a fifth of the 39,000-hour library at Netflix, in accordance with Ampere Evaluation.
“It’s getting tougher to get library content material – they’re not going to get exhibits like Mates now, they’re locked in elsewhere,” says Michael Pachter, a media analyst at Wedbush. “To create 4,000 films would take them 200 years. To create 17,000 hours of TV would take an eternity. They couldn’t do it quick sufficient. They’d to purchase one thing. The query is how a lot Amazon can now exploit.”
A lot of the main target has been on MGM’s flagship property: James Bond. At 59 years previous, the evergreen display screen spy is the world’s second-longest operating movie franchise after Godzilla, and a few analysts have estimated he could possibly be value half the near-$9bn price ticket of the entire library.
Bond is a treasure trove, unexploited past the 25 characteristic movies specializing in its star, which Amazon would dearly like to develop right into a Marvel- or Star Wars-like “universe”. The one drawback is that Bond is partly owned by Eon Productions within the UK, which is run by Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson, who train strict management over how the character is used – even down to selecting the actor who performs him. Following the announcement of the deal, they reiterated that 007’s major dwelling would stay the large display screen, saying: “We’re dedicated to proceed making James Bond movies for the worldwide theatrical viewers.”
Plans for one potential spin-off in 2002 – a film based mostly on the character Jinx, performed by Halle Berry in Die One other Day – had been scrapped the next yr, whereas the extremely profitable Younger Bond collection of books for younger adults has by no means made it past print.
“I feel the best alternative is with the Bond franchise,” says John Mass at Content material Companions, a Los Angeles-based funding agency that owns the rights to content material together with Black Hawk Down, Olympus Has Fallen and a part of the CSI tv franchise. “I feel that ‘universe’ might be an overused time period, however I do suppose that there’s a large quantity of mental property that has not been exploited. What Bond has demonstrated is that the asset, the model, is resilient.”
Nonetheless, past Bond, MGM – which made $1.5bn (£1bn) final yr, principally from licensing its properties – has an array of invaluable belongings ripe for additional exploitation. Rocky has been given a brand new lease of life with the Creed collection of movies starring Michael B Jordan. A second Addams Household animated movie is due for launch this yr, whereas a TV collection is within the works at Netflix. Disney+ has an upcoming collection, Willow, based mostly on the 1988 Ron Howard movie, and a hybrid animated/live-action reboot of The Pink Panther is within the works.
In the meantime, the Russo brothers – the administrators of one of many biggest-grossing movie of all time, Avengers: Endgame – are on board to remake a number of movies, beginning with The Thomas Crown Affair; a 3rd instalment of Legally Blonde is due subsequent yr; and CBS has psychological crime drama Clarice, a TV spin-off which has its roots in The Silence of the Lambs.
However not like MGM, which was compelled out of business a decade in the past and presently carries about $2bn in debt, Amazon has the monetary firepower to supercharge the exploitation of this library. The corporate, which has $73bn in money readily available and a market worth of $1.6 trillion, spent $11bn on content material final yr and can lay out $15.5bn this yr. It has reportedly spent $465m on its first TV collection set on this planet of Lord of the Rings, the rights for which had been secured after Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, reportedly informed executives to “discover a Recreation of Thrones” to take the struggle to Netflix, the world’s main streamer.
Observers and analysts speculate at potentialities together with a remake of Thelma and Louise, which celebrates its thirtieth anniversary this yr, or reviving the late-80s collection Thirtysomething. Franchises together with Stargate and Tomb Raider seem ripe for a significant new funding, whereas RoboCop is prepared for brand new audiences following 2014’s disappointing remake. TV hits The Handmaid’s Story and Fargo are presently locked in offers with Hulu and FX, however are additionally seen as ripe for future exploitation.
The one content material off the desk is a few 2,000 basic movies, together with hits resembling Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz and Singin’ within the Rain, which MGM bought to Warner Bros in 1986.
“When it comes to manufacturing there’s lots of mental property that’s under-exploited from a rights standpoint,” says Mass. “There are a great deal of potential sequels, remakes and prequels within the MGM library. I’m positive MGM have completed a great job with it, however the streaming wars are happening, and a brand new workforce of individuals at Amazon will uncover much more alternatives.”
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