Jeff Bezos' Amazon is all se to announce a deal to buy storied Hollywood studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) on Tuesday, a clutch of financial news dailies reported.
If the deal goes ahead, yet another pure form entertainment banner will come into the grasp of ig Tech. Amazon is tipped to spend as much as $9 billion to buy the last standalone studio in the Hollywood.
Competition in Hot Segment
The Amazon-MGM deal will decisively enhance the streaming giant's Prime Video platform. Amazon's acquisition of MGM will heighten competition in a hot segment where the likes of Netflix, Apple and Disney are vying with each other for one-upmanship.
Amazon, the $1.6 trillion dollar corporate giant, has been looking to gobble up entertainment banners that suit its expansion plans, while MGM has also been on the block for a significant period of time, looking for buyers.
MGM would bring as many as 4,000 films in its catalog to the Amazon fold should the deal go through. This will include classics like Dances With Wolves, Rain Man and the Terminator movies, besides James Bond, Pink Panther, RoboCop and Rocky franchises.
Biggest Takeover After Whole Foods
On the other side, Amazon owns media player Amazon Fire and video-gaming chat service Twitch besides streaming platform Amazon Prime, which has more than 200 million users.
If the deal is agreed, it will be Amazon's biggest takeover since its purchase of Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion. Amazon had also acquired media brands and spent a whopping $11 billion on content for its streaming video and music services just the last year.
Bloomberg reported that Amazon is in talks to pay almost $9 billion for MGM but few other details have emerged. The discussions to hammer out a deal were first reported last week.
Neither Amazon nor MGM have publicly made comments on the impending deal.
MGM Looking for Sale
At the end of last year, MGM had said it was looking for a sale. It was reported that MGM had contracted Morgan Stanley and LionTree LLC to look for an acquirer. MGM, which is owned by hedge funds like Anchorage Capital Group, had also explored other options to raise money after failing to find a buyer.
AT&T-Warner Bros Deal
It was reported last week that WarnerMedia and Discovery were in talks to hammer out a deal to create $150 billion media giant. US telecommunications giant AT&T owns WarnerMedia unit, a brand that owns CNN and HBO. A merger of the unit with Discovery media would create a super-sized media company that could take on companies like Netflix and Disney.
The massive media deal would bring brands like Warner Bros film and TV, HBO TV series, Discovery's reality-TV shows and cable networks like CNN under one roof. AT&T is in talks with with Discovery to hammer out a $150 billion tie-up to take the fight to the camp of streaming services Netflix and Disney+, it was reported. AT&T had acquired the media assets of Time Warner for $85 billion some three years ago. The new entity would be owned by AT&T and Discovery jointly.
