Comcast owns NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News. Both Apple and Comcast have looked at acquiring MGM in recent years and determined its value to be about $6 billion, two sources familiar with those talks said. The deal is a financial win for MGM, which was reportedly valued at just $5.5 billion, including debt, at the end of last year. MGM also splits the highly lucrative James Bond movie franchise with a family that holds.
Smaller Hollywood players such as ViacomCBS, Fox Corp., Lionsgate and AMC are all likely to be acquired within a matter of years, many industry insiders predict. MGM also owns the EPIX cable channel and runs a TV studio that produced The Handmaids Tale and Fargo. Discovery and WarnerMedia announced plans to merge last week. The deal comes amid a new round of consolidation in media as companies seek greater scale to compete in streaming against bigger companies such as Netflix and Disney. MGM is Amazon’s second-biggest acquisition ever following the $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods in 2017.
The deal will give the e-commerce and cloud computing giant a famed studio and catalog of film and television titles to beef up its Amazon Prime streaming service, from the James Bond and 'Rocky' franchises to TV series such as “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Fargo.”
