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"No Time to Die" for MGM:
The Hollywood studio, which is best known for its James Bond films, is suffering from the closed cinemas - the streaming offers are booming
Photo: MLADEN ANTONOV / AFP
The international media industry remains on the move after two big deals.
Amazon has taken over the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) film studios, as the world's largest online retailer announced on Wednesday, confirming speculations from around a week ago.
The group pays around 8.45 billion dollars (6.9 billion euros) for MGM.
This is the second-largest acquisition in the company's history after purchasing grocer Whole Foods in 2017 for just under $ 14 billion.
With the film studio, Amazon can strengthen its streaming service Prime Video in the increasingly tough competition against Netflix and Walt Disney.
Amazon shares gained 0.7 percent in pre-market trading.
The Hollywood studio, founded in 1924 and known for its company logo with the roaring lion, owns the entire James Bond film library.
MGM also operates the Epix cable channel.
The studio also produces well-known television series such as "The Handmaid's Tale", "Fargo" and "Vikings".
MGM was so far one of the few Hollywood film studios not yet swallowed up by a large corporation.
The competition from Warner Bros. ("Game of Thrones") still belongs to AT&T, Fox to the entertainment giant Disney, Universal to the cable company Comcast, and Paramount to the media company Viacom CBS.
The largest shareholder in MGM is the hedge fund Anchorage Capital, which invested in the ailing MGM studios from 2010 after the financial crisis.
AT&T sells media business to Discovery
Only at the beginning of last week had the wave of consolidation in the industry ensured that the US telecom giant AT&T wanted to merge its Warner Media (CNN, HBO, Warner Bros.) division with the offer from rival Discovery in order to focus on its core business again. The competition in the industry is too great, AT&T could not keep up and be a telecommunications and media company in one. In Europe, the French television companies M6 and TF1 want to merge, the French conglomerate Boygues and the Luxembourg media group RTL are major shareholders.
Like the rest of the industry, MGM has suffered from closed cinemas in the pandemic, the start of the blockbuster hope "No Time to Die" from the James Bond series has already had to be postponed several times. In contrast, video streaming at home is booming in North America and Europe with the lack of opportunities to go out. In addition to buying licenses, streaming companies are now investing a lot of money in their own productions in order to expand their offering. Amazon, for example, increased spending on production and licensing of video and music content from $ 7.8 billion to $ 11 billion last year. In addition to films, MGM also offers series on a smaller scale.
Last year, the streaming top dog Netflix is said to have shown interest in buying the exclusive rights for the new James Bond movie from the MGM studios.
According to reports, the streaming service was ultimately too expensive.
mg / dpa-afx, Reuters, AP