From James Bond to Handmaids Tale and Stargate, MGM Studios owns the rights to several thousand movies and over 10,000 hours of TV shows and now they belong to Amazon the depth of titles will help catapult Prime Video from a 2nd tier to a top tier streaming service.
Jeff Bezos said of the deal:
“MGM has a vast, deep catalogue of much-beloved intellectual property”
“With the talented people at MGM and the talented people at Amazon Studios, we can reimagine and develop that IP for the 21st century.”
Amazon’s purchase of MGM Studios doesn’t mean that Prime Video will instantly include all the MGM TV shows and movies as many are currently licenced to rival streaming services like Netflix and STAN.
However it means during the next few years competitors have to pay Amazon the licence fee eg: STAN streams James Bond films in Australia at the moment.
As these deals expire Amazon can claw back content bit by bit and put it on their own streaming service like Disney did recently pulling Marvel and other content from Netflix etc.
Bezos mention of intellectual property is important because it means that he plans for Prime Video to create spin off TV series, movies and possibly merchandise related to big MGM brands old and new eg: Fargo, Vikings, the Rocky movies and the Pink Panther series.
