Amazon will buy MGM for $8.45 billion. This is not a surprise, as MGM has been for sale for quite some time, and secrets about this purchase were not well-kept. Amazon is making this $8.45 billion purchase for exactly the same reason Ted Turner purchased MGM for $1.5 billion back in 1985: the library is epic! There are 4,000 movies including “Rocky,” “The Pink Panther,” and the James Bond series, and more than 17,000 episodes of iconic television shows. Amazon spent more than $11 billion on content last year and almost $8 billion the year before, so $8.45 billion for the MGM catalog seems like a bargain.
Considering the “war on big tech,” I’m wondering about the Paramount Consent Decrees of 1948 (currently in a two-year sunset period that began in August 2020). That was the DOJ’s weapon of choice for separating movie studio and movie theater ownership back in the day. I wonder what the DOJ will think about this…
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