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Amazon Prime Video
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08-03-2022, 12:57 AM
New this year The Country Music Awards are now live globally on Amazon Prime Video including the preliminaries
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail...HYtZ1t_7_1
17-03-2022, 05:45 PM
Related to this, but after the European Commission approved the deal, Amazon has successfully taken over Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Leo the Lion will now have the "An Amazon company" byline.
https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/amazon-...235207852/ 
17-03-2022, 05:55 PM
Medianext.MX post_id=73785 time= user_id=1455 Wrote:Related to this, but after the European Commission approved the deal, Amazon has successfully taken over Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Leo the Lion will now have the "An Amazon company" byline.Now that's one media merger done-and-dusted!  My mind's just racing, though, whether MGM and Amazon Studios will combine their operations, because I do think it would be a wee bit befuddling to have them both operating as stand-alone studios (especially in regards to their TV divisions).
Everyone's favourite BBC fanatic-of-sorts, making columns blow up since April 2020
17-03-2022, 10:59 PM
Amazing to think at one time Amazon was one of the major film studios, but since the late 60s it's been palmed off on various owners (including one occasion where Ted Turner bought it, but then had to virtually immediately sell it on, though he kept the film library which was probably more valuable than the studio itself at that point) and even nearly gone bust on some occasions. They don't even own the archive of their pre-1986 films (i.e. pretty much all the classic ones), Warner Brothers do!
18-03-2022, 12:19 AM
James2001 post_id=73851 time= user_id=956 Wrote:Amazing to think at one time Amazon was one of the major film studios, but since the late 60s it's been palmed off on various owners (including one occasion where Ted Turner bought it, but then had to virtually immediately sell it on, though he kept the film library which was probably more valuable than the studio itself at that point) and even nearly gone bust on some occasions. They don't even own the archive of their pre-1986 films (i.e. pretty much all the classic ones), Warner Brothers do! Yep. It was during the so-called Golden Age one of the major Hollywood studios, formed thanks to theatre mogul Marcus Loew's acquisition of the smaller Metro, Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer studios in 1924, the merged company inherited Goldwyn's lion symbol it uses nowadays (a fond memory of the Hollywood star system and one of the most recognised film logos worldwide, even if the scare it had in the childhoods of many of us). It was one of the studios which pioneered many industry standards: Technicolor, the star system, multiple film releases per year... The studio had a successful track record in serious drama, historical films, glamorous musicals, and animation (launching the careers of Hanna-Barbera and Tom & Jerry), however, the drift to TV and the offsetting of losses from the big epic films (like Ben-Hur) caused fortunes to get messy: a successful drive to real estate and casinos led to a deal with Kirk Kerkorian, which relaunched the studio's fortunes by selling unneeded divisions and spinning off the real estate division from the film outpost; since then, the studio is considered a "mini-major" (that is, a smaller studio in size, prestige and finances, but with the ability of producing and distributing various films a year). Since then, the studio has had its hits-and-misses: in 1981, Kerkorian bought United Artists from Transamerica, resulting on the MGM/UA Communications Group, and leading to distribution deals with smaller studios like Cannon Films; but finances went bleak, leading to the hostile takeover from Ted Turner. It was sold to them in March 1986, but had to resold it back to Kerkorian in August, citing enormous debts; in exchange, Turner retained the pre-1986 films and assets (including the Tom & Jerry shorts, and many legendary films like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz) and put them into a holding company of his TBS empire, Turner Entertainment (since absorbed into Warner Bros after the former Time Warner bought TBS in 1996). Then, in 1990, Kerkorian sold MGM/UA to a consortium of Italian impresario Giancarlo Paretti and French bank Crédit Lyonnais, in the process merging with the Pathé studio. The merger did not last long: a debted Paretti sold its stake to CL two years later, in turn, they sold back the company to Kerkorian in 1995. To rebuild the company, Kerkorian bought assets from Metromedia and PolyGram, and bought a 20% stake in what is now AMC Networks. But the rebuilding process, again, failed: the company struggled with debts and Kerkorian put the Lion again to sale; his death in 2004 accelerated the process. It was sold to a consortium led by Sony Pictures, TPG Capital and Comcast in 2005, after a transition year in which Columbia/TriStar distributed their films, MGM returned as distributor by signing with many indies, and began focusing more on television ventures (including launching its original channels in partnership with DirecTV, Weigel, Sinclair, Paramount and Lionsgate, among others). In 2009, the company nearly went bust, thanks to the global financial crisis; late 2010 the studio had to declare bankruptcy, but it was quickly rescued. The company has since focused in its core properties, like Bond, the TV studio (now under the leadership of Mark Burnett) and a focus on distributing author-based mainstream films, through its United Artists Releasing subsidiary (as well as a global distribution deal with Comcast). Recently, with Michael De Luca at the helm, the studio made its Lion computerised (it will be retained by Amazon, as it was only launched last year) and has since flourished in prestige and finances, with Licorice Pizza and House of Gucci earning many accolades from critics and audiences and earning nominations in the award season. - - - Turning back to the Amazon takeover, tomorrow there will be information about the company's future. So far known is that MGM will be a subsidiary of Amazon Studios, the company which leads Prime Video, and all MGM employees will now onward work for Amazon, although current production and distribution timelines are unaffected. Additionally, MGM will retain the United Artists Releasing division, and will not move MGM properties exclusively to Prime Video, although the streamer will be distributing content in a case-to-case basis. https://deadline.com/2022/03/amazon-mgm-...234981242/
20-03-2022, 04:20 PM
New info on the Amazon-MGM merger: Michael De Luca and Mark Burnett staying put as Chairmen of Motion Pictures and Television, respectively, but now reporting to Amazon Studios' SVP Mike Hopkins. Lesley Freeman, Chief Legal Officer, Ken Kay, Chief Financial Officer, Chris Ottinger, President, WW TV Distribution, and Stephen Bruno, Chief Marketing Officer will now report to MGM's COO, Chris Brearton, which in turn will also report to Hopkins. Additionally, MGM HR, Finance & Accounting, and Communications leaders and teams will now report to Amazon Studios' respective departments. All of this was announced on Friday during two separate town halls targeting MGM and Amazon Studios employees, both held in hybrid circumstances.
https://deadline.com/2022/03/mike-hopkin...234982307/ https://deadline.com/2022/03/amazon-mgm-...234982055/
15-04-2022, 06:49 PM
Prime Video's AVOD service IMDb TV is being renamed Amazon Freevee, as part of an expansion of the service to include additional content, including a pivot to original scripted and unscripted content, including an original movie starring former Disney star Brenda Song, a new scripted series based on Tegan and Sara's memoir High School, a new unscripted series from Jeff Lewis, a spin-off of the Prime Video Original Bosch, the acquisition of the ABC TV drama Troppo, as well as production and distribution deals with NBCUniversal and Wolf Entertainment (in tandem with Prime Video). The rebrand will happen on April 27, and the service will expand to Germany by the end of the year, the third country to get the service after the US and the UK.
https://advertising.amazon.com/blog/intr...on-freevee
Not sure when it happened but all of the Eon Productions James Bond films now appear to be on Prime Video - fairly quick off the mark after the MGM takeover.
Including “No Time to Die”.
21-04-2022, 12:01 PM
Happened last week:
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter...58680.html MGM will probably be safer with Amazon than it has been before, considering it's been bailed out from bankruptcy at least twice.
27-04-2022, 05:13 PM
Big news coming in the wake of the Amazon-MGM merger: Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy are out. De Luca is reportedly going to Warner Bros. Discovery to become Warner Bros.' new Chairman. If true, it will be the Lion's loss, given he led the studio to its biggest momentum since the end of the Kerkorian tenure, but also Zaslav's gain.
https://variety.com/2022/film/news/mgm-m...235242529/ |