Amazon Now Owns Stargate And A Whole Lot More
Amazon made a purchase of MGM that was finalized today and it will include titles like Stargate and a whole lot more from the catalog
This article is more than 2 years old
In the streaming wars, content is king. Every service and company wants to amass the largest catalog possible so that they have titles, both series and movies, for years to come. Providing enough hours of watching to users will always be enticing which is why we are seeing something of an arms race within this world right now. Everyone is scrambling to get as much under their proverbial umbrella as possible. And along those lines, Amazon finalized a huge move this week with the completion of an $8.5 billion dollar acquisition of MGM, putting titles like Stargate and a whole lot more on Amazon Prime in the near future.
This deal between Amazon and MGM had been a long time coming (Stargate fans would know). It was announced almost a year ago that the former would acquire the latter, thereby moving the entirety of the robust catalog over to Amazon. But it’s taken the better part of the last 10 months to dot the i’s and cross the t’s on the deal while it also passed through the regulatory process at the heart of some of these major mergers. There didn’t seem to be anything blocking the deal along those lines and it was ultimately approved. MGM and all of its titles are now part of Amazon and the Prime video service is about to get a major short-term and long-term boost in what will be offered.
And oh baby the franchises Amazon now has under its massive roof (Stargate included). Considering MGM was among the holdouts when it came to streaming services for studios, there were a number of different franchises that have been sort of a la carte around the industry. But that’s not going to be the case anymore. For starters, the James Bond franchise past, present, and future has a new home. Not only does Amazon now control all the iterations of 007 they will also have a voice in how the character moves forward with a new lead.
Other titles coming to Amazon from MGM include the aforementioned Stargate franchise which has had multiple movies as well as successful series over the years. We could see this rebooted under the Amazon flag which would be a welcome set of news for fans out there. There had been rumors of another series in the works over the last few years, though that had dried up, especially around the word of this pending transaction. We could start to have things ramp up sooner than later on that front.
Finally, other franchises that Amazon will now control include Rocky, Handmade’s Tail, Robocop, Pink Panther, Vikings, Addams Family, Tomb Raider, and many others. MGM was a company founded 97 years ago though has seen plenty of shakeups along the way. Per the announcement from Amazon, the company has now purchased the rights to 4,000 movies and 17,000 television episodes. So yeah, they are working with a pretty big influx of content. This marks one of the largest deals in the media industry, one that will have major ramifications for some of the most popular franchises and titles. We are sure to hear about Amazon’s many Stargate plans over the next few years.
