[HN Gopher] Amazon Nears Deal to Buy Hollywood Studio MGM
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Amazon Nears Deal to Buy Hollywood Studio MGM
Author : lunchbreak
Score : 72 points
Date : 2021-05-24 18:53 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Amazon.com Inc. is nearing a deal to buy the Hollywood studio
| MGM Holdings for almost $9 billion including debt, said people
| familiar with the matter, a pact that would turn a film operation
| founded in the silent era into a streaming asset for the
| e-commerce giant.
|
| What surprises me is that at $9 Billion, why hasn't it been
| acquired by now?
|
| Right now, video streaming is pretty much a solved problem, and
| it is content that differentiates one service from another.
|
| If you are an Internet giant, $9 Billion seems like a pocket
| change to get access to a huge catalog.
| dageshi wrote:
| The biggest IP is Bond and the Broccoli family own 50% of it
| and have creative control over the movies (and whether or not
| it can be a tv series).
|
| I imagine that's the complication, you buy MGM but don't really
| have full control over the crown jewel so to speak.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Good point - you'd think Netflix would have been buying this
| stuff up.
| agustif wrote:
| how many originals can they pump out at 9B though?
| Kye wrote:
| Owning proven stuff is probably a more reliable investment
| than hoping one of your darts in the wall develops the
| cultural cachet of any of these:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Metro-Goldwyn-
| Mayer_f...
|
| How many Netflix productions come even close for all the
| tens of billions they've poured into it? Reliable names
| mean customer retention.
| agogdog wrote:
| Honestly that doesn't seem all that great for $9bn.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| As attractive as catalog content can seem, it's not the
| reason why new customers join, and stay with, a streaming
| service. New content is King.
| echelon wrote:
| Tell that to the owners of The Office.
|
| Peacock making anything new and relevant?
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| Amazon tends to beat the creative parts out of the companies they
| buy. I bet it's related to the financial efficiencies they apply
| to them. Creativity is expensive without any guaranteed return.
|
| Most of the new prime video content, that I've seen, seems to
| have a very safe tone to it. Yes, it's new but it's safe. No one
| will be surprised or insulted by it. It starts to get boring very
| quickly.
|
| As new owners, I hope they don't have such a hard hand that they
| ruin the brand.
| yocheckitdawg wrote:
| I disagree with this. The search for "safe" is by no means an
| Amazon problem exclusively and in many ways they do it much
| less than most.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > Most of the new prime video content, that I've seen, seems to
| have a very safe tone to it. Yes, it's new but it's safe. No
| one will be surprised or insulted by it. It starts to get
| boring very quickly.
|
| Overall I agree with your point and I'm extremely confident
| Amazon buying MGM will completely and utterly fuck over any
| creative potential that company has (similar to what's
| happening with AT&T and HBO), but - if you're looking for
| something good to watch on Prime, take a look at Invincible. I
| was actually about to give up on it and then I got to the end
| of the first episode and I binged the rest of the show in less
| than a day.
|
| It's the first time in years I've looked forward to the next
| season of a show that isn't a comedy.
| yocheckitdawg wrote:
| If you like Invincible, you should The Boys a try. It is
| fantastic, great cast, great cinematography, and great source
| material which is adapted in such a way that it is honestly
| better than the original comics it is based on.
| subsubzero wrote:
| Agree, I think the same thing happened when Disney acquired Fox
| film studios. Disney is notorious for low pay and alot of the
| fox execs/creatives were extremely worried after the
| acquisition, same thing going on with with Amazon/MGM.
|
| I know amazon paid a fortune for Tolkien's Silmarillion TV
| rights and we haven't seen a single thing about that situation.
| My big worry is amazon screws around with the Bond franchise
| and ruins it, it seems to be doing extremely well with top
| directors and large blockbuster returns.
| sparrc wrote:
| Fleabag and Marvelous Mrs Maisel didn't seem very safe to me at
| all
| crmrc114 wrote:
| I just want Jeff bezos to save Stargate like he saved the
| expanse. I can only hope that Amazon will protect The Stargate
| franchise from coming to the same fate as Star wars and Star
| trek.
| space_ghost wrote:
| The Expanse was cancelled and then saved by Amazon within a
| year, Stargate has essentially been a dead property for 10
| years.
| schraeds wrote:
| Stargate Origins came out in 2018
| withinrafael wrote:
| Stargate is actually on the brink of returning. And that's
| super exciting. Amazon may give it that extra disposable
| money push needed.
|
| Some newer developments you may have missed:
|
| * Stargate Origins aired in 2018 [1]
|
| * Brad Wright/Joseph Mallozzi are actively working to get a
| new project off the ground [2] and are looking to tap
| original cast members (to bootstrap)
|
| * A new Stargate 4X strategy game was just announced [3]
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Origins
|
| [2] https://www.gateworld.net/news/2021/05/stargate-
| timekeepers-...
|
| [3] https://www.gateworld.net/news/2021/05/stargate-
| timekeepers-...
| dogma1138 wrote:
| There is a difference between saving a show and saving a
| franchise.
|
| The Star Trek movies saved the franchise which lead to TNG,
| DS9 and Voyager, they didn't save the original series tho.
|
| I only hope is that they won't turn Stargate into Discovery
| like show.
| fareesh wrote:
| Chevron 7 locked
|
| "waaaaaaaaaa"
| saghm wrote:
| If they do make a new series, I think I care more about
| Walter getting a cameo than literally anyone else from
| the original show
| slakrems wrote:
| They will probably ruin it with feminism just like the rest of
| them.
| MattGrommes wrote:
| What does Amazon get if they buy a Hollywood studio, besides the
| content library? Is MGM just a holder of copyright for various
| popular franchises or does the company actually make things?
| mathattack wrote:
| Strategic power against other content creators. They need some
| can't miss content similar to HBO/Disney/Netflix.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| You've just answered your own question. A huge catalog of
| classics as well as franchises that can be developed into new
| shows and movies.
|
| The Bond franchise alone probably is worth half of what this
| deal is gonna cost.
| slg wrote:
| >The Bond franchise alone probably is worth half of what this
| deal is gonna cost.
|
| Probably not. MGM doesn't "own" Bond in the same way that
| Disney owns Star Wars. There are complicating factors to the
| Bond movies that reduce the brand's value to MGM and any new
| prospective owner.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Right, Bond is controlled by the Broccoli family (Eon
| Productions)
| Kye wrote:
| Previous discussion from when it was reportedly rather than near:
| "Amazon is reportedly negotiating to acquire MGM for about $9B"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27194167
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| So when are we going to break up Amazon?
| ashneo76 wrote:
| This purchase should be illegal yesterday
| reddog wrote:
| Yes. The classroom example of a vertically integrated
| monopoly has always been the big movie studio systems in the
| 40s. They not only made the movies but also distributed them
| and then owned the theaters they were shown in. This monopoly
| was broken up in 1948. It resulted in better films and paved
| the way for television.
|
| Amazon will make the movies, host them on AWS, stream them to
| their Firesticks, shows them through Amazon Prime on glowing
| rectangles bought in their store and monetizes it all with
| their ad service. How is that not a vertical monopoly?
| echelon wrote:
| Monopolists are going to downvote you, but they're wrong.
|
| These megacorps shouldn't be allowed to enter fifteen
| different industries and kill off the incumbents. This is
| absurd.
|
| Amazon is internet services infra, shopping, logistics,
| fulfillment, consumer hardware, networking, a payments stack,
| publisher, grocery store, and now a fucking entertainment
| company.
|
| They track us, turn us into non-owner subscribers, and
| prevent us from building companies that can compete with
| their scale. We're eternally subservient. It's not healthy
| for innovation!
|
| Break up Apple.
|
| Break up Amazon.
|
| Break up Google.
| walshemj wrote:
| But all those rich news paper /media moguls get a pass then
| ipsum2 wrote:
| > Amazon is internet services infra, shopping, logistics,
| fulfillment, consumer hardware, networking, a payments
| stack, publisher, grocery store, and now a fucking
| entertainment company.
|
| How many of these do they have a monopoly on? Keep in mind,
| the definition of monopoly is: "the exclusive possession or
| control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or
| service."
| echelon wrote:
| They can enter new industries well below market cost and
| destroy all of the existing businesses. They then soak up
| everything. In the end, everything becomes Amazon.
|
| They did it to open source, bookstores, retail.
|
| Maybe you don't see the end goal, where every restaurant
| is Amazon and you rent your home from Jeff Bezos?
|
| Maybe you're not worried and you trust these people?
|
| Maybe you don't want to compete and you just want to be
| an employee?
|
| I don't know. But this is wrong. You can't compete with
| this, you're forced to work with it. It decreases degrees
| of freedom and angle of attack for everyone else.
|
| From Amazon's perspective, their moat becomes an ocean.
| Hope you can swim.
| kuang_eleven wrote:
| They are the dominant player in only a few of those, and
| even in those dominant markets, they are far from a
| monopoly.
|
| Now, if they use a dominant position in one industry to
| gain advantage in another, that is a different story, but
| also a harder thing to show.
| subsubzero wrote:
| Competition is great(for innovation, pay, creativity)
| anything that interferes with competition, is a bad net for
| society and good for a very small number of incumbent
| players.
| echelon wrote:
| Except that the biggest company buying up other players
| is _highly anticompetitive_?
| diab0lic wrote:
| I don't think subsubzero was disagreeing with you. Their
| comment reads like it is supporting you.
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