Amazon he offered 9 billion dollars (equal to approximately 7,4 billion euros) to purchase Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (mmm), historic American company of television and film productions. The news was spread by various international media and closely follows the announcement of another major operation in the video entertainment sector, i.e. the merger between Warner Media and Discovery.
According to what reported by Bloombergthe negotiations between Amazon and MGM have been underway for several weeks now and the protagonists of the negotiations would be two: the head of Amazon TV, Mike Hopkins, and the president of MGM, Kevin Ulrich.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which has the Anchorage Capital fund as its main shareholder, has been looking for a buyer for months. Despite having globally important productions to its credit, such as the James Bond franchisee, MGM has suffered like all cinematographic companies the impact of the pandemic of coronavirus, which has forced cinemas to close, postpone or cancel new projects and postpone upcoming films around the world.
In particular, MGM was forced to James Bond film No Time To Die postponed four times, from which, in normal times, he would have already collected hundreds of millions of dollars. Netflix had proposed to the production house to release the latest chapter of the 007 saga only via streaming, but the price requested by MGM was also prohibitive for the queen company of internet cinema. At this point, now that the acute phase of the pandemic is now behind us In Europe and the United States, the theatrical release of the latest James Bond episode has been scheduled for September 30 in the United Kingdom and October 8 In the USA.
For Amazon, however, the acquisition of MGM would be an important step to strengthen the streaming service Prime Video, called upon to support increasingly fierce competition from giants such as Netflix, Disney Plus and Apple TV.
