Amazon completes acquisition of film company MGM

Amazon has completed its acquisition of film company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. As a result, the catalog with more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV episodes is in the hands of Amazon. More MGM titles are expected to come to Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service.

MGM ‘complements’ according to Amazon the work of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, and the teams will work together to bring “better entertainment options” to customers, according to Amazon. Amazon probably wants to bring at least part of the MGM collection to streaming service Prime Video, but the companies have not said anything concrete about this yet.

Amazon announced the acquisition last May and will pay $8.45 billion for the film company. MGM’s archive includes James Bond, Robocop, Rocky, Stargate, Tomb Raider, Fargo, The Handmaid’s Tale and Vikings. That is not to say that Amazon will now get full rights over all these series. For example, half of the rights to the James Bond films are in the hands of EON Productions.

Before Amazon could complete the acquisition, the company was waiting for regulatory approvals. The Washington Post notes that the legal waiting period before the US Federal Trade Commission had expired. The European Union had also previously indicated that it did not see any major problems. As a result, Amazon was able to complete the acquisition on Thursday.