Amazon tends to beat the creative parts out of the companies they buy. I bet it's related to the financial efficiencies they apply to them. Creativity is expensive without any guaranteed return.
Most of the new prime video content, that I've seen, seems to have a very safe tone to it. Yes, it's new but it's safe. No one will be surprised or insulted by it. It starts to get boring very quickly.
As new owners, I hope they don't have such a hard hand that they ruin the brand.
The Boys? Invincible? Fleabag? Transparent? Marvelous Mrs. Maisel? The Expanse?
I disagree with your premise entirely. I see them trying to unseat HBO as the resource for all the pop culture shows you remember twenty years from now.
I definitely believe them to be bolder than Netflix for their breadth of original libraries.
That might be a little bold, but that’s what I see them trying to do.
Totally agree. I don't watch much streaming these days but from my limited experience Amazon and HBO are the only ones where i can tune in to a random new show and have a better than even chance it's not total pap.
> Most of the new prime video content, that I've seen, seems to have a very safe tone to it. Yes, it's new but it's safe. No one will be surprised or insulted by it. It starts to get boring very quickly.
Overall I agree with your point and I'm extremely confident Amazon buying MGM will completely and utterly fuck over any creative potential that company has (similar to what's happening with AT&T and HBO), but - if you're looking for something good to watch on Prime, take a look at Invincible. I was actually about to give up on it and then I got to the end of the first episode and I binged the rest of the show in less than a day.
It's the first time in years I've looked forward to the next season of a show that isn't a comedy.
If you like Invincible, you should The Boys a try. It is fantastic, great cast, great cinematography, and great source material which is adapted in such a way that it is honestly better than the original comics it is based on.
When was the last time MGM did something truly creative? They pretty much just churn out the same formulaic franchise films every 2-3 years (James Bond, Rocky/Creed) or do pointless reboots (Robocop, Legally Blonde, Pink Panther). The studio has already gone through bankruptcy and layoffs and is on its last legs. There isn't too much left for Amazon to ruin.
This is exactly it. The goal of the sale is to own the rights to semi-famous original content and an interesting back catalog on the cheap. Amazon just sees the sale as better then bidding against Netflix for the same content.
Opinion that you didn't ask for: I felt that it was both a good show and a terrible one at the same time and decided to stop watching it. It felt like it was 40% "haha these mega-rich Jews are mega-rich, Jews, and also out of touch", 40% "Gilmore Girls in New York", 19% "romantic nostalgia for Lenny Bruce and a young Joan Rivers", and 1%...I don't know...maybe "they showed boobs on screen that one time".
Agree, I think the same thing happened when Disney acquired Fox film studios. Disney is notorious for low pay and alot of the fox execs/creatives were extremely worried after the acquisition, same thing going on with with Amazon/MGM.
I know amazon paid a fortune for Tolkien's Silmarillion TV rights and we haven't seen a single thing about that situation. My big worry is amazon screws around with the Bond franchise and ruins it, it seems to be doing extremely well with top directors and large blockbuster returns.
Some of the Prime content (my point of view is as a consumer in India), seems to bank on portraying sex / sexuality in a more open manner (depictions of sexual acts, topless scenes, etc). Feels like there is a certain degree of planning to "exploit" this type of media, considering Indian society and media itself is fairly conservative.
In India, Amazon ran into troubles for a bunch of its show. It's another thing that India is becoming more and more politically volatile. But yea, Amazon did make bold enough stuff here.
> Yes, it's new but it's safe. No one will be surprised or insulted by it.
Are you sure? I was just watching the first episode of Solos where the character says that Trump has defected/escaped to Russia. I won’t call that a safe line..
Similarly they have Borat 2, again not very safe.
Perhaps you’re referring to some other type of content..
I just want Jeff bezos to save Stargate like he saved the expanse. I can only hope that Amazon will protect The Stargate franchise from coming to the same fate as Star wars and Star trek.
When they do something anti-consumer. As it is now, they are saving consumers so much money, the federal reserve has blamed them for keeping inflation low.
Yes. The classroom example of a vertically integrated monopoly has always been the big movie studio systems in the 40s. They not only made the movies but also distributed them and then owned the theaters they were shown in. This monopoly was broken up in 1948. It resulted in better films and paved the way for television.
Amazon will make the movies, host them on AWS, stream them to their Firesticks, shows them through Amazon Prime on glowing rectangles bought in their store and monetizes it all with their ad service. How is that not a vertical monopoly?
Monopolists are going to downvote you, but they're wrong.
These megacorps shouldn't be allowed to enter fifteen different industries and kill off the incumbents. This is absurd.
Amazon is internet services infra, shopping, logistics, fulfillment, consumer hardware, networking, a payments stack, publisher, grocery store, and now a fucking entertainment company.
They track us, turn us into non-owner subscribers, and prevent us from building companies that can compete with their scale. We're eternally subservient. It's not healthy for innovation!
> Amazon is internet services infra, shopping, logistics, fulfillment, consumer hardware, networking, a payments stack, publisher, grocery store, and now a fucking entertainment company.
How many of these do they have a monopoly on? Keep in mind, the definition of monopoly is: "the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service."
They can enter new industries well below market cost and destroy all of the existing businesses. They then soak up everything. In the end, everything becomes Amazon.
They did it to open source, bookstores, retail.
Maybe you don't see the end goal, where every restaurant is Amazon and you rent your home from Jeff Bezos?
Maybe you're not worried and you trust these people?
Maybe you don't want to compete and you just want to be an employee?
I don't know. But this is wrong. You can't compete with this, you're forced to work with it. It decreases degrees of freedom and angle of attack for everyone else.
From Amazon's perspective, their moat becomes an ocean. That's hard to swim in.
Competition is great(for innovation, pay, creativity) anything that interferes with competition, is a bad net for society and good for a very small number of incumbent players.
What I don't understand is why Netflix hasn't been doing this already – use their vast wealth to buy some legacy entertainment companies. Gives you both the opportunity to get their legacy content library into your streaming service, and also existing stories to use as a basis for new content (Disney seems to be pretty good at doing the later recently)
> Amazon.com Inc. is nearing a deal to buy the Hollywood studio MGM Holdings for almost $9 billion including debt, said people familiar with the matter, a pact that would turn a film operation founded in the silent era into a streaming asset for the e-commerce giant.
What surprises me is that at $9 Billion, why hasn’t it been acquired by now?
Right now, video streaming is pretty much a solved problem, and it is content that differentiates one service from another.
If you are an Internet giant, $9 Billion seems like a pocket change to get access to a huge catalog.
Is Peacock the embodiment of streaming success? For every Office and Friends there are 100s of duds that people just don't care much about after the final season.
What does Amazon get if they buy a Hollywood studio, besides the content library? Is MGM just a holder of copyright for various popular franchises or does the company actually make things?
>The Bond franchise alone probably is worth half of what this deal is gonna cost.
Probably not. MGM doesn't "own" Bond in the same way that Disney owns Star Wars. There are complicating factors to the Bond movies that reduce the brand's value to MGM and any new prospective owner.
Most of the new prime video content, that I've seen, seems to have a very safe tone to it. Yes, it's new but it's safe. No one will be surprised or insulted by it. It starts to get boring very quickly.
As new owners, I hope they don't have such a hard hand that they ruin the brand.