Amazon to buy MGM Studios for $8.45 billion

On Wednesday, Amazon said it signed an agreement to buy Hollywood studio MGM for $8.45 billion. Myles Udland, Brian Sozzi, and Julie Hyman break down the move to expand Amazon’s streaming catalog.

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JULIE HYMAN: But let's just quickly bring in another breaking story that we had this morning-- or sort of breaking, as you pointed out earlier, Myles, which is about Amazon buying MGM, $8.45 billion. Remember the range that was talked about was $8 to $9 billion. Listen, guys, we've talked about this a bunch, right, what this could mean for Amazon, what it does for them. I don't know if you guys have any sort of lingering thoughts, Myles, on the-- I think, Sozz, you think maybe that the price is maybe a good bargain for Amazon.

BRIAN SOZZI: Right, well, this is a, I would say, is a steal of a deal. And I'm looking right now at-- Erin Fuchs, deputy managing editor here-- I'm looking at her story. And it seems the whole reason why Amazon probably made this deal, in the second paragraph, Amazon noting MGM has a huge catalog of more than 4,000 movies. These are iconic classic titles. We brought this up yesterday. And I'm bringing up again "James Bond." You have the "Rocky" franchise. You have 17,000 TV shows inside, in addition to these, TV shows like a "Fargo" and a "Handmaid's Tale." So this is like-- this is a big deal. This is a big deal for Amazon. And I think it makes a lot of sense.

MYLES UDLAND: I was just struck by the way they listed out all the properties in the press release. They went by alphabetical order, so "12 Angry Men" starts because numbers come before letters. But it's always interesting just to see what they highlight-- Creed. Obviously, "James Bond," I think, is the main franchise in here that we're highlighting. But they did emphasize that back catalog. And you think about something like a "Rocky," "Silence of the Lambs," "Thelma and Louise," these are not particularly modern properties, but they certainly have enduring kind of a back catalog there.

So as we discussed and sort of speculated and we'll see with time, there's a lot that they could monetize if they are not so committed to just putting this behind the Prime paywall and maybe, again, leasing it back to some of the other streaming services, who are certainly always going to be looking for content, some of which-- more of which, I guess we should say-- Amazon is now the owner of.