Amazon agrees to acquire Hollywood studio MGM for $8.45 billion

Dimapur, May 26 (EMN): Amazon has agreed to acquire Hollywood studio MGM in a deal worth $8.45 billion, the company announced on Wednesday, in a bid to bolster its streaming inventory.

The deal will give Amazon Prime Video access to Metro Goldwyn Mayer‘s (MGM) vast library of over 4,000 film titles including iconic franchises like James Bond, The Hobbit, Robocop and Rocky. Amazon‘s takeover of MGM is the second-largest in its history after the tech company bought American grocery chain Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7 billion.

The news of the acquisition comes at a time when AT&T has announced to merge HBO Max parent WarnerMedia with Discovery. Prior to that, we had already seen Disney acquire the rights to most of 21st Century Fox‘s assets for $71.3 billion in 2019.

It may be mentioned that MGM was interested in a sale since December 2020. The studio was reportedly in talks with Apple for a $6 billion takeover but it did not materialise.