What does Amazon’s buy­out of MGM mean for movie-lovers?

A plume of white smoke drifts out of MGM​‘s head­quar­ters this morn­ing, as exec­u­tives cry out the tra­di­tion­al Latin procla­ma­tion of ​“habe­mus buy­er!” The stu­dio, once a major show­biz play­er and now a weak­ened ver­sion of its for­mer self fol­low­ing a 2011 bank­rupt­cy, has accept­ed an acqui­si­tion offer from the folks at Ama­zon to the tune of $8.45 bil­lion and ush­ered in a new era for Hollywood.

Not since the Dis­ney-Fox deal of – dear god, this can’t be right – two years ago has the indus­try sta­tus quo been shak­en up so dras­ti­cal­ly, with pow­er now con­sol­i­dat­ed among a small­er-than-ever num­ber of cor­po­rate enti­ties that just keeps shrink­ing. For the aver­age movie­go­er, reshuf­fling between con­glom­er­ates most­ly spells doom, result­ing in less room for exper­i­men­ta­tion and risk-tak­ing as bot­tom lines take greater prece­dence. But sure­ly, there’s some upside here.

The cov­er­age this morn­ing under­scored Amazon’s high val­u­a­tion of the MGM port­fo­lio of exist­ing intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, even though some obscure twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry deal­mak­ing trans­ferred own­er­ship of all titles pre­dat­ing 1986 to Warn­er Bros. James Bond was the biggest name involved, but there’s a hitch there as well, as the Broc­coli fam­i­ly still holds absolute author­i­ty over the char­ac­ter and must approve all deci­sions per­tain­ing to 007, even as MGM owns fifty per­cent of the property.

The real moves, the reboots and sequels and pre­quels and pre­boots and so on, will be made else­where with oth­er prop­er­ties. Ama­zon has inher­it­ed a hand­ful of fran­chis­es with some life still in their veins, so expect more of the Rocky/​Creed uni­verse, a revived Pink Pan­ther, and per­haps anoth­er install­ment in the ongo­ing Pol­ter­geist saga. The offi­cial press release also rat­tles off a list of clas­sics they’ve got an eye on, almost like a threat: 12 Angry Men, Robo­Cop, Silence of the Lambs, Legal­ly Blonde, and Rag­ing Bull, to name only a few.

The most excit­ing, hard-to-pre­dict projects will come from deep­er in the cat­a­logue. Ama­zon now has sole license to the likes of gym­nas­tics-based action spec­ta­cle Gymka­ta, the immor­tal sex­pot satire Show­girls, Pauly Shore cor­ner­stone Bio-Dome, neo-blax­ploita­tion land­mark Soul Plane, and of course, Hot Tub Time Machine. From this fer­tile new tract avail­able to Ama­zon, any num­ber of won­ders could grow.

Ordi­nary folks can also look for­ward to a pre­sumed super­charge of the spot­ty Ama­zon stream­ing con­tent library, with an influx of new titles bol­ster­ing their some­what lim­it­ed (though in some nich­es, sur­pris­ing­ly exten­sive — check out the mar­tial arts selec­tion) array of movies. On the oth­er hand, see­ing some of these titles the­atri­cal­ly may become more dif­fi­cult, with larg­er stu­dios grow­ing reluc­tant to allow their wares to be shown by inde­pen­dent reper­to­ry cinemas.

The deci­sion­mak­ers at Ama­zon have yet to set any time­line for the mas­sive changes due to be imple­ment­ed, but it’ll sure­ly be soon. In the movie busi­ness, new man­age­ment doesn’t tend to waste time mak­ing their pres­ence known.