Movies
Amazon Buys MGM for $8.45 Billion With Plans to Reimagine the “Treasure Trove of IP in the Deep Catalog”
As we continue getting closer and closer to a few massive companies controlling all the media we consume, we’ve learned this morning that Amazon has officially purchased Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, spending a whopping $8.45 billion to acquire the legendary studio’s assets.
The plan? Amazon is looking to do two main things. First, “preserve MGM’s heritage and catalog of films.” And second, we can likely expect reboots of popular MGM properties.
As Mike Hopkins, senior Vice President of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, explained this morning (via THR), “The real financial value behind this deal is the treasure trove of IP in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM’s talented team. It’s very exciting and provides so many opportunities for high-quality storytelling.”
In other words, we can expect to see MGM’s past titles find an exclusive home on the Amazon Prime streaming service, with Amazon Studios likely creating a wealth of original content based on some of the more popular properties in that legendary library. Franchises under the MGM banner include James Bond, RoboCop, Rocky, The Hobbit, and The Addams Family.
THR notes, “MGM boasts a film library of around 4,000 titles and 17,000 hours of TV programming.” One of the big horror properties that Amazon has now acquired as part of the MGM deal? Killer Klowns from Outer Space, which MGM has been dragging their feet on rebooting for decades. MGM is also involved in Nia DaCosta’s upcoming sequel to Candyman, and they hold the rights to The Silence of the Lambs, recently launching the “Clarice” series. Other properties potentially involved include Poltergeist, Amityville Horror and Pumpkinhead.
It’s also worth noting that MGM owns Orion Pictures, which was recently relaunched with genre movies including The Belko Experiment, The Prodigy, Child’s Play, and Gretel & Hansel.
You can read more about the historic merger over on The Hollywood Reporter.
Nia DaCosta’s ‘Candyman’
After pulling in $28 million at the worldwide box office this month, director (and star) Dev Patel’s critically acclaimed action-thriller Monkey Man is now available to watch at home.
You can rent Monkey Man for $19.99 or digitally purchase the film for $24.99!
Monkey Man is currently 88% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with Bloody Disgusting’s head critic Meagan Navarro awarding the film 4.5/5 stars in her review out of SXSW back in March.
Meagan raves, “While the violence onscreen is palpable and painful, it’s not just the exquisite fight choreography and thrilling action set pieces that set Monkey Man apart but also its political consciousness, unique narrative structure, and myth-making scale.”
“While Monkey Man pays tribute to all of the action genre’s greats, from the Indonesian action classics to Korean revenge cinema and even a John Wick joke or two, Dev Patel’s cultural spin and unique narrative structure leave behind all influences in the dust for new terrain,” Meagan’s review continues.
She adds, “Monkey Man presents Dev Patel as a new action hero, a tenacious underdog with a penetrating stare who bites, bludgeons, and stabs his way through bodies to gloriously bloody excess. More excitingly, the film introduces Patel as a strong visionary right out of the gate.”
Inspired by the legend of Hanuman, Monkey Man stars Patel as Kid, an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.
Monkey Man is produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions.
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