E-commerce giant Amazon has agreed to buy one of the biggest names in Hollywood, MGM Studios. It’s the film studio behind the popular James Bond series, nearly a century old in existence.

• Amazon has agreed to buy MGM Studios for a price of $8.5bn. It marks the e-commerce giant’s second-biggest acquisition after it bought Whole Foods for $14bn in 2017. 

• With MGM, Amazon is coughing up much money to strong-arm its media business. MGM has a very recognized content library including the James Bond and Tomb Raider series that’ll boost the prowess of Amazon Studios by a great deal.

• As Amazon itself notes, the secret sauce of buying MGM is “the treasure trove of IP in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM’s talented team”. 

• MGM’s content library now to be owned by Amazon will do much for its Amazon Prime Video streaming business. With exclusivity of many popular films, it’ll be a key customer attraction for Amazon’s video streaming business in intense competition with the likes of Netflix and Disney+.

• Amazon is buying MGM from a group of private equity owners including Anchorage Capital Group, Highland Capital Management, and Solus Alternative Asset Management. They took over MGM as creditors when the studio filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2010 under high debt.

• MGM Studios is the last major acquisition carried out by Amazon under the leadership of Jeff Bezos who’s stepping down soon. It’ll mark another insignia to his career of building Amazon from an online bookstore into a tech giant with major operations in many areas.

Related:

• Big Tech: D.C. Files Antitrust Suit Against Amazon

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