{"id":112480,"date":"2022-03-18T18:32:02","date_gmt":"2022-03-18T23:32:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/?p=112480"},"modified":"2022-03-18T18:32:04","modified_gmt":"2022-03-18T23:32:04","slug":"amazon-completes-8-5-billion-purchase-of-mgm-and-gains-hobbit-distribution-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2022\/03\/18\/112480-amazon-completes-8-5-billion-purchase-of-mgm-and-gains-hobbit-distribution-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Amazon completes $8.5 billion purchase of MGM (and gains Hobbit distribution rights)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\" class=\"intro\"><a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2022\/tv\/news\/amazon-mgm-merger-close-1235207852\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">According to Variety<\/a>, Amazon has finally completed its $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was MGM&#8217;s precarious financial situation in the mid-2000s that delayed The Hobbit film series and contributed to the departure of Guillermo Del Toro from the production. Peter Jackson subsequently assumed the directorial role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Amazon says it&#8217;s acquisition of &#8220;the storied, nearly century-old studio &#8230; will complement Prime Video and Amazon Studios\u2019 work in delivering a diverse offering of entertainment choices to customers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Variety reports that the buy followed merger approval by the European antitrust regulator. That body&#8217;s review decided that overlaps between Amazon and MGM were &#8220;limited&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Readers may recall that the Saul Zaentz Co. also <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2022\/02\/09\/112082-saul-zaentz-co-to-sell-its-tolkien-rights-holdings\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">recently announced<\/a> the sale of its entire holding of Middle-earth IP, and that there is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/2022\/02\/18\/112369-warner-bros-and-saul-zaentz-co-spar-over-tolkien-film-rights\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">an ongoing legal stoush<\/a> over whether Warner Bros.\/New Line Cinema still retains its LOTR\/Hobbit film adaptations license. Given the above, it&#8217;s not impossible (though the chance is, perhaps, remote) that Amazon could eventually unite all the currently available Middle-earth film and television IP under its own banner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"320\" height=\"187\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/mgm-com-new-footer-logo.png\" alt=\"MGM logo\" class=\"wp-image-112483 no-lazyload\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/mgm-com-new-footer-logo.png 320w, https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/mgm-com-new-footer-logo-300x175.png 300w, https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/mgm-com-new-footer-logo-255x149.png 255w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Variety, Amazon has finally completed its $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM. It was MGM&#8217;s precarious financial&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":112483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3127,435,4,1156,1287,74,498,148,149,392],"tags":[3206,357,3725,698],"class_list":["post-112480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-amazon-studios","category-guillermo-del-toro","category-hobbit-movie","category-mgm-production-studios-production","category-new-line-cinema-production-studios","category-jackson","category-production-studios","category-hobbit","category-lotr","category-warner-bros","tag-amazon-studios","tag-mgm","tag-prime-video","tag-saul-zaentz-company"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/mgm-com-new-footer-logo.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tLoH-tgc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=112480"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112485,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112480\/revisions\/112485"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/112483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theonering.net\/torwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}