The Great Streaming Wars continue with the biggest online retailer buying itself a whole movie company.
At one time, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) was the movie studio. Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz are among the well-known classic films released by MGM, and characters like Tom and Jerry are still around today. But changing in audience habits, rising costs, various sales, and bad decisions led to its downfall. While they’ve had periods of profitability and personal renaissance, during the Great Recession, MGM was forced to file for bankruptcy. Its creditors took control of MGM. In the years before and after the bankruptcy, almost every major studio was interested in either buying parts of MGM’s library and film production or teaming up with them, like Sony wanting to ensure MGM movies were released on its (then new) Blu-ray format.
Ultimately, while MGM has ties to many productions through its subsidiaries and such, in modern times, it is mainly known for the James Bond film series. And while the studio has been put up for sale many times before, the COVID-19 pandemic, which wrecked havoc in the movie/theater business (among others), made a sale much more desirable for the creditors.
And now, a buyer has been found: Amazon, the largest online retailer in the world.
The price tag is almost $8.5 billion, but this isn’t the largest acquisition of Amazon’s. (That honor belongs to Whole Foods.) Still, it’s quite a sum, and as Variety details:
Whether industry analysts underestimated the value of MGM or Amazon overpaid I’m sure will be debated in the months and years to come. But why would the retailer pay for a movie production company? For its Prime Video streaming service. As soon as the deal closes (which is unknown but will likely be this year), Amazon can add a whole bunch of new content to its digital catalog, including old silent films and musicals like Ben-Hur, franchises like The Hobbit and Pink Panther, and upcoming movies like House of Gucci starring Lady Gaga. The company also receives MGM’s filmmaking assets and connections which can be used to create new content.
Prime Video, despite its name, is not limited to those who subscribe to Amazon’s Prime plan. That costs $12.99 a month or $119 a year, but Prime Video can be purchased as a stand-alone service for $8.99 a month.
Prime Video is only second to Netflix in terms of subscribers, and Amazon is setting sights on closing and surpassing this gap. Earlier this year, Amazon struck a deal with the NFL to become the home of Thursday Night Football. This deal reportedly costs $1 billion a year for the next 11 years, and some researchers believe this will increase the number of Prime Video subscribers. It’s a part of Amazon’s overall increase in spending for their video streaming, which rose 41% in 2020 versus their 2019 numbers ($11 billion versus $7.8 billion).
So in short, Amazon is betting big on streaming. So what does that have to do with the anime world? Not a lot…right now. Prime Video includes some anime series, and Amazon did once try to reach out to the anime community with their ill-fated Anime Strike subscription plan. But if nothing else, that did mean Amazon had its eye on this streaming segment before the Great Streaming Wars really started. And if Amazon is eyeing Netflix, it’s a genre Amazon is not going to be satisfied as-is.
Netflix is betting big on anime with its various deals (and even has social media accounts just for that content), and while I doubt Amazon is going to go into production like Netflix, Amazon always seems to be looking for ways to grow. And obviously, they are currently throwing a lot of cash into shoring up Prime Video. Surely Amazon and other services aren’t just going to let Netflix grab more Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Eternal-like exclusives with no competition.
Plus, the stand-alone plan is less than a lot of streaming services, and for a few more dollars, people can get benefits like free shipping and free reading. Very few people are going to be able to subscribe to every service, and each new acquisition is meant to tip the scales so that users decide, “Well, I want to see [x], so I guess I’ll keep it.” Amazon has no problem throwing cash to support Prime Video right now, and with Prime being so incredibly popular, it probably doesn’t take much for most Prime members to renew their membership. While MGM’s film library may not interest a lot of anime fans, I think there’s little reason to doubt there won’t be more big announcements just around the corner.