Amazon completes its $8.5B acquisition of MGM

The movie was always a favorite of mine, and I think Shanks did a servicable job after Spader (even though no one could replace Russell). I would love a reboot of SG1 that isn't shackled by the budget of a 1997 genre TV-show. The spin-offs got gradually further away from what I liked about the initial premise, even if I understand what others might like about them.

Semaphor• 4 years ago

I’d take either. I thought by S2 Universe was very promising after an unfocused S1. It died before its time.

dsparkman• 4 years ago

I vote for more Stargate! It is a franchise that has just be languishing for far too long.

unemphysbro2• 4 years ago

indeed

distances2• 4 years ago

Rather hoping for a proper HD remaster of SG-1!

gojomo2• 4 years ago

On the one hand, the original recordings & models might not be sufficient for a true 'remaster' from original sources.

But on the other, ML-driven upscaling has improved so much that a model trained specifically on the full series – so that it inherently "knows" what various characters/sets/props should look like, at higher-resolutions, from other closer-in shots – might offer acceptable results.

Definitely worth a research project from a tech-smart outfit like Amazon.

HWR_144• 4 years ago

I thought more Stargate was already announced. An SG-1 reunion.

I will say, they'll have to decide if they want it to be Stargate like showtime produced or like scifi did.

andrew_2• 4 years ago

There was a reading of an AI-generated script with 4 cast members, but I haven't heard anything (or been able to find anything) about an actual reunion.

nly5• 4 years ago

I'm not sure where you go in the Stargate universe next though. Over the 10 seasons they defeated all the antagonists, demystified the Gate Builders (Ancients), and took some philosophical turns (destruction of the Asguard, Ascension, religious undertones with the Ori etc)

SG-1 was an epic show, but where would you take it next?

Universe was actually a good attempt to breakout of the Ancient Earth mythology and leave it all behind, but the last thing we want is another "Picard" or worse... ST:Discovery

tmikaeld• 4 years ago

"Picard" or worse... ST:Discovery

Glad I'm not the only that's fed up with overly emotional therapy TV shows.

Geritio3• 4 years ago

Universe was something with an interesting storyline. I can imagine watching it more.

I also heard that a new show would introduce the Stargate to the public with plenty of though experiments they could play out.

Stargate Atlantis also had plenty of new ideas.

I hope that it will not feel like std were technology looses it's fun due to it being so advanced that it doesn't matter anymore.

avisser• 4 years ago

SG-1 was an epic show, but where would you take it next?

I'm being 50% sincere, but SG-2? (I know they were in the show sometimes, but hand-wave)

To me, the show was best with the Go'uld tie-ins with Ancient Earth mythology. Give me more of that, with that smooth, melodramatic pacing and I'm in.

mysore• 4 years ago

i liked "picard"! whats wrong with picard?

gojomo2• 4 years ago

Definitely hard to extend the original canon/continuity!

Our heroes eventually become very overpowered, with ~12y of shows resolving millions of years of space opera backstory to our protagonists' benefit, as they defeat the parasites-on-good-ol'-humans in not one, not two, but three galaxies. (Or is it 4?)

But it's such a rich mythology that if rebooted, with all the old stuff as inspiration, updated for modern sensibilities, they could have new really-fertile Cinematic Universe.

RDM's BSG was 10x better than the original, & now JMS is doing his own updated reboot of Babylon 5.

Amazon should find a bunch of people with love for, & credibility regarding, the original & have them brainstorm a giant new set of multi-year arcs, cleanup of old weaknesses or outdated elements, homages & new spins on the original core elements, etc.

They could kick off another 2 decades of gradually-unfolding, but well-adapted for the 2020s/2030s, universe- & multiverse- & metaverse-spanning sci-fi.

If anyone from the relevant Amazon/MGM group is reading this: I have some ideas!

smegger0013• 4 years ago

My dream series is Make it so the gate, and galactic travel, and all alien high technology goes public. public disclosure fallowed by the immediate political ramification of all the governments of the world knowing about alien life and going to war with it in secret. weak governments would be toppled stronger ones would have regime changes. afterword the expansion and colonization of space and how that works out for different countries doing so differently along with how to the other inhabitant of the galaxy react when it goes from the 'those brave earth warriors that overthrew the oppressive false god of the goa'uld and saved us from forced conversion at gun point by the Ori" to "those bastard are now trying to colonized my planet." Plus the goa'uld never went away just are no longer the galaxy spanning power they were before. couldn't you see the likes of Baal taking over corporations in charge of colony projects. then there is Atlantis were things were it just kind of ended without any resolution to the goings on in Pegasus galaxy or what happens to the ori galaxy after their gods were all killed their priest lost power and the entire power structure that held their society together disappeared overnight leaving the most powerful space navy in the show with no one left in charge (might want to check up on them). then there is the asgaurd home galaxy (triangulum) that now is left without the asgaurd or replicator but what else was their they were in the habit of nurturing lesser species and they just handed earth the keys and told us to take of everything before they mass suicided again we might want to check on that. Oh and their are the Vanir (asgaurd splinter group form millennias ago ) we me in the last season of atlantis

lenkite• 4 years ago

We need a reboot with all the special effects possible today - for the newer generation. Folks could use the opportunity to tighten up some of the plot-lines too. And have public exposure of the gates - thanks to some whistleblower.

derefr• 4 years ago

I miss shows that don't try to have big arc plots and huge setpieces that blow up the per-episode budget; but instead, are okay with being 24-episode seasons of comfy rubber-mask filmed-in-a-forest-in-Vancouver monster-of-the-week schlock. The 90s had so much of this: Stargate, X-Files, Buffy, etc. Why aren't we still making this? Do we just collectively feel like the world has "enough" of it?

Or, to put that another way: I don't need to go anywhere else in the Stargate universe. The place we started in is fine. I just want to watch a cast of hammy actors with excellent chemistry walk through a big puddle into novel science-fantasy situations.

moltke• 4 years ago

I'm sure it will be great given the history of Netflix and Amazon.

https://cloudflare-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmYqh8z4hoFhJPko6TvjBEWQqGZ...

imdsm• 4 years ago

Bring on the new Stargate!

Alex3917• 4 years ago

You would think that a motto like Ars Gratia Artis would automatically disqualify a company from being a culture fit for Amazon.

bsedlm• 4 years ago

ah, it's not such a bad fit, just tweak it into: Profit for Profit's sake

notacoward3• 4 years ago

"Lucrum pro lucri (causa)" in case anyone was wondering.

lanstin2• 4 years ago

Art for profits sake?

asdffdsa• 4 years ago

Eh, they lost credibility once the became a big-time profit-seeking movie-making (apologies for my lack of vocabulary) studio

pavlov• 4 years ago

So that would be 1924?

MGM was founded by the owner of a movie theater chain (Loew's) to make blockbuster movies.

trimbo2• 4 years ago

A friend who worked there about a decade before they went bankrupt once told me Bond was the only thing keeping that studio alive.

some_random• 4 years ago

You would think that Google wouldn't be Like That with "Don't be Evil" as their motto, yet

535188B17C93743• 4 years ago

Didn't they explicitly (but quietly) get rid of it several years ago?

Edit: I think this [1] is what I was thinking about.

[1] https://gizmodo.com/google-removes-nearly-all-mentions-of-do...

notacoward3• 4 years ago

But what is evil, really? When financial success is equated with virtue, as is far too often the case nowadays (especially in the US), then "don't be evil" means "don't be poor" and they certainly try to abide by that.

Dave3of5• 4 years ago

I'll echo I'd love to see a new stargate series. Maybe take off from where universe left us ?

Another team gates to the Destiny.

technofiend• 4 years ago

Oh yeah that would be amazing. Stargate sort of like Sliders really enjoyed a huge universe of possibilities because they can literally go anywhere. Would love to see it revisited with Amazon's budget!

nly5• 4 years ago

Wow, Sliders... that show was great until they replaced every single character

Also we learn from episode 1 that wormhole travel is better than sex ;)

TMWNN• 4 years ago

I'm pretty sure that Amazon bought MGM to prevent Bezos from being the next James Bond villain.

(Not him specifically, but a bald man described as an "Internet mogul" who is "the richest person on Earth" with "tentacles in every aspect of daily life", and is now "building his own private space program".)

bryanrasmussen• 4 years ago

I don't think MGM has secured any of the distribution rights to Bond going forward, but I could be wrong - it's a pretty complicated area.

buu700• 4 years ago

The title is kind of misleading. I was all excited to find out what kind of vision Amazon had for a chain of hotels.

I wonder how a tech-enhanced Amazon Mandalay Bay would fare against the Black Hat crowd.

bsimpson• 4 years ago

MGM is first and foremost a film studio. Metro, Goldwyn, and Meyer were film producers in the 1910s who merged to form MGM in 1924.

Kirk Kerkorian was a Vegas developer who bought MGM in 1969, and use its films to theme the MGM Grand hotel. (He also bought United Artists, founded by Charlie Chaplin and friends as a contemporary of Metro, Goldwyn, and Meyer.) Kirk sold the film studio to Ted Turner in 1986, spinning off the hotel-casino business as MGM Grand.

snarf213• 4 years ago

It is so sad that the FTC and SEC have completely failed us in the 21st century. Shareholder value above all else.

relueeuler• 4 years ago

How did they fail you?

tcook_sucks_xie• 4 years ago

they created a american oligarchy thats as bad as the russian one

justify it how ever you want, same result

stingraycharles• 4 years ago

I have no opinion on this matter, but I assume the parent implies that those agencies should not have approved this deal.

MichaelMoser123• 4 years ago

in the sense that some corporation is turning into the real world equivalent of the fictional Buy N Large from the movie Wall-E

snarf213• 4 years ago

By neutering consumer choice, neutering consumer protections, killing smaller business, making it hard for new companies to compete/innovate, etc.

oh_sigh2• 4 years ago

Do you also feel the same way about the European Union antitrust commission? Because they unconditionally signed off on the deal as well.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/amazon-wins-e...

snarf213• 4 years ago

Yes, but I don't live in the EU and they aren't funded by my taxes.

lifefeed• 4 years ago

It'll be amazing to have all those old, great movies freely available on streaming. Half the reason I have HBO Go is for TCM, and I assume that will be moving to Prime soon.

fredoralive• 4 years ago

The pre-1986 MGM library is owned by Warner Bros. via its purchase of Turner Entertainment, not MGM itself thanks to some interesting financial manoeuvres by Ted Turner in the mid-80s. So old MGM films are probably staying on TCM.

MGM does also hold other libraries like post-1952 United Artists films and Orion pictures films as well though.

edmcnulty101• 4 years ago

So Amazon does physical goods, has AWS, has digital goods like MGM and Prime.

It's literally eating the world. Everything will just be Amazon at some point.

vishnugupta• 4 years ago

Everything will just be Amazon at some point.

It is almost there. When AWS has a blip most of the popular apps/products stop working, including my Roomba

HWR_144• 4 years ago

Why would your Roomba connect to anything? It's supposed to be an autonomous timed launch, so you don't even need to launch it.

wenc2• 4 years ago

For Roomba specifically, this is not true. It doesn’t stop working.

The app stops working yes but there’s a button on the machine you can press to start a job.

It’s the same deal with my Anova sous vide circulator, my Nest etc. Their apps requires cloud access yes. But all of them can function without it.

source: Roomba 675 / Anova / Nest owner.

andrew_2• 4 years ago

If you've seen Wall-E, you might be able to imagine a world where Buy-n-Large is Amazon.

themadturk• 4 years ago

Well, except for the part of the world that's Disney...

throw0101a• 4 years ago

Even more concentration of (media) industry.

dmitriid• 4 years ago

Whelp, Netflix is now finally and completely screwed. Not that it isn't screwed already, but it's hanging in there by a thin thread.

gadflyinyoureye• 4 years ago

Nah, Netflix will make another show where all the depth of their characters is solely which letter of the Alphabet gang they align with. This is Terry. Ze’s a bad ass cause ze’s non-binary-bi.

BaseballPhysics2• 4 years ago

I find it interesting that Amazon is pursuing vertical integration while elsewhere in the media industry we see companies like AT&T doing the exact opposite.

It'll be interesting to see if, ten years from now, Amazon is any more successful. So far, it's not been clear that this kind of integration is, in fact, a net benefit for the acquirers, and it certainly doesn't benefit consumers.

vl• 4 years ago

To be fair, Amazon is integrating everything they can everywhere in the business forever. I think in Bezos’ mindset end game is one MegaAmazon owning entire planet. Like Universal Paperclips.

BaseballPhysics2• 4 years ago

Sure, it's a modern conglomerate. That's nothing new. Conglomerates have been around for literally a hundred-plus years.

What's fascinating is that the traditional industrial conglomerate has been declining for decades now, with the most notable recent breakup being GE. Meanwhile, tech companies are going the other way:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/11/23/1057446470/the...

I think it's a wide open question as to whether the conglomerate is, in fact, an economically efficient entity, or if in the long run, Amazon, too, will break up.

I'd argue the only reason modern tech conglomerates exist and succeed is because antitrust regulators have failed to recognize the impact they've had in destroying a competition.

As a result, these modern conglomerates aren't making money via the standard argument: increased efficiencies, market diversification, etc. Rather, they're profitable because they're leveraging their horizontal and vertical integration to monopolize whole industries.

If world governments return to a more forceful anti-trust regime, I suspect we'll find these tech conglomerates will die off just like their ancestor industrial conglomerates have been.

wenc2• 4 years ago

Americans maybe aren’t used to thinking in terms of conglomerates because there are only a handful of visible ones here but conglomerates are pretty common all over Asia where a single company has holding in a diverse number of industries (eg Samsung cars, Hyundai real estate etc). There are structural reasons for the existence of conglomerates outside of diversification and expansion into adjacent markets. I think your last statement is debatable (that it doesn’t benefit consumers). It really depends — we assume that conglomerate companies will bulldoze the competition with impunity because they’re cross subsidized but in real life this isn’t always true especially if one takes a global view instead of a domestic one.

bastardoperator• 4 years ago

Does this mean Amazon owns Vegas now too?

dmoy• 4 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30711781

throwaway123x23• 4 years ago

After the crap that was Wheel of Time, they probably need it.

manishsharan• 4 years ago

I actually be enjoyed watching "wheeel of time" with my kids. Family friendly fantasy shows are so rare.

imbnwa• 4 years ago

Note to self: a bunch of pretty 20-somethings can't save your script if the audience is given little reason to care about anyone on screen.

Netflix and Amazon keep trying to manufacture their own cash cow, Game-of-Thrones level show but refuse to invest both the money and (slightly more so) due diligence that HBO does.

thfuran• 4 years ago

Wheel of Time was not a low-budget show.

rg1113• 4 years ago

Bosch was a really good one. Will recommend it. It is among all-time-bests, I will say.

Tales from The Loop was unique and dream-like. I liked it for being so original.

Wheel of Time bloopers made me feel like it was "manufactured TV". So, didn’t watch it.

I hated Amazon for killing Mozart in The Jungle.

throwaway123x23• 4 years ago

Oo I just started reading the Bosch series, am excited to pick up the show when I'm done!

munificent3• 4 years ago

Does anti-trust just no longer exist as a concept? How big are we going to let companies get?

falcolas2• 4 years ago

N + 1 for N at the time of evaluation.

It has to be particularly gregarious, or involve the EU, to get knocked down in this day and age.

sebazzz2• 4 years ago

Can tell the EU any company that operates in their market not to merge?

shrikant• 4 years ago

Egregious?

rosndo4• 4 years ago

Why would Amazon buying MGM ever have been an antitrust issue?

I’d understand the concern if Amazon was buying Walmart or Ebay, but for MGM you’ll have to further explain your understanding of antitrust laws.

basch• 4 years ago

It would be a concern in a world that said it was illegal to own a streaming service and content. The government would have to force divestiture of all content libraries from all the conglomerates.

munificent3• 4 years ago

Vertical integration is still anti-competitive in the general sense of making a market less efficient and reducing consumer agency (which is two ways of saying the same thing).

Ideally, a consumer would be able to choose all combinations of which shows they watch on which streaming services on which devices. But when electronics companies start buying up content producers and offering their own streaming services, you start running into situations where only certain streaming services offer certain content. That benefits the streaming services like Amazon here, but not consumers.

We should be particularly worried about this when it comes to media because media is one of the primary ways that culture propagates itself today. When you let a handful of trillion-dollar companies own the majority of stories that people listen to help build their understanding of the world, you put a ton of control in the hands of people who really shouldn't have it.

stjohnswarts4• 4 years ago

Current anti-trust laws are a poor fit. Congress really needs a trust-busting 2.0 movement or they're always going to be able to weasle their way through the court system until they get lucky with some judge or outspend the opposition on lawyers.

stjohnswarts4• 4 years ago

Amazon MGM streaming now available! chucks amazon prime video into the dumpster

Amazon completes its $8.5B acquisition of MGM

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