OPENING The Carnivores (NR) This drama stars Lindsay Burdge and Tallie Medel as a lesbian couple whose marriage starts to come apart under the strain of their dog’s grave illness. Also with Frank Mosley, Vincent James Prendergast, and Jason Newman. (Opens Friday in Dallas) The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do
Cinema Chat: 05/27/21 SINGIN IN THE RAIN AND THE WIZARD OF OZ ARE NOT PART OF THE AMAZON DEAL
Here’s why MGM has a long history of mergers and acquisitions revolving around its library.
With its $8.45 billion deal to buy MGM, Amazon will stock Prime Video with the studio’s cache of 4,000 movies and 17,000 hours of television. It’s a huge library, but notably absent are some of MGM’s most iconic films, including “The Wizard of Oz,” and “Singin’ in the Rain. Those titles and all other MGM movies made before 1986 belong to WarnerMedia.
In 1986, Ted Turner made a series of deals that resulted in Turner Broadcasting taking ownership of all prior MGM films. Not unlike Amazon, he wanted the films for programming his growing cable empire and the library became one of the pillars that built Turner Classic Movies. Today, WarnerMedia owns what was Turner Broadcasting, including TCM and the MGM library.