Amazon MGM Studios is an American film and television production and distribution company owned by Amazon, and headquartered at the Culver Studios complex in Culver City, California. Launched in November 2010 as Amazon Studios, the company adopted its name in October 2023 after its merger with MGM Holdings, which Amazon had acquired the year prior.
Productions from the studio are primarily distributed through theaters and Amazon's own streaming media service, Amazon Prime Video.
The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is an American trade association representing the major film studios of the United States, the mini-major Amazon MGM Studios, as well as the video streaming services Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. Founded in 1922 as the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) and known as the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) from 1945 until September 2019, its original goal was to ensure the viability of the American film industry. In addition, the MPA established guidelines for film content which resulted in the creation of the Motion Picture Production Code in 1930. This code, also known as the Hays Code, was replaced by a voluntary film rating system in 1968, which is managed by the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA).
The MPA has advocated for the motion picture and television industry, with the goals of promoting effective copyright protection, expanding market access and has worked to curb copyright infringement, including attempts to limit the sharing of copyrighted works via peer-to-peer file sharing networks and by streaming from pirate sites. Former United States ambassador to France Charles Rivkin is the chairman and CEO.
Concentration of media ownership, also known as media consolidation or media convergence, is a process wherein fewer individuals or organizations control shares of the mass media. Research in the 1990s and early 2000s suggested then-increasing levels of consolidation, with many media industries already highly concentrated where a few companies own much of the market. However, since the proliferation of the Internet, smaller and more diverse new media companies maintain a larger share of the overall market. As a result, many of the references below on this page are of declining relevance in comparison to the influence of digital media companies such as Meta, ByteDance or X.
Globally, some of the largest media conglomerates include Bertelsmann, National Amusements (Paramount Global), Sony Group Corporation, News Corp, Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox Corporation, Hearst Communications, Amazon (Amazon MGM Studios), Grupo Globo (South America), and Lagardère Group.
United Artists (UA) is an American film production and distribution company owned by Amazon MGM Studios. In its original operating period, it was founded on February 5, 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks as a venture premised on allowing actors to control their own financial and artistic interests rather than being dependent upon commercial studios.
After numerous ownership and structural changes and revamps, United Artists was acquired by media conglomerate Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1981 for a reported $350 million ($1.2 billion today). On September 22, 2014, MGM acquired a controlling interest in One Three Media and Lightworkers Media and merged them to revive the television production unit of United Artists as United Artists Media Group (UAMG). MGM itself acquired UAMG on December 14, 2015, and folded it into their own television division.
Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington, the company originally started as an online marketplace for books, but gradually expanded its offerings to include a wide range of product categories, referred to as "The Everything Store". Amazon has been described as a Big Tech company.
The company has multiple subsidiaries, including Amazon Web Services (or AWS), providing cloud computing; Zoox, a self-driving car division; Kuiper Systems, a satellite Internet provider; and Amazon Lab126, a computer hardware R&D provider. Other subsidiaries include Ring, Twitch, IMDb, and Whole Foods Market. Its acquisition of Whole Foods in August 2017 for US$13.4 billion substantially increased its market share and presence as a physical retailer. Amazon also distributes a variety of downloadable and streaming content through its Amazon Prime Video, MGM+, Amazon Music, Twitch, Audible and Wondery units. It publishes books through its publishing arm, Amazon Publishing, produces and distributes film and television content through Amazon MGM Studios, including the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio it acquired in March 2022, and owns Brilliance Audio and Audible, which produce and distribute audiobooks, respectively. Amazon also produces consumer electronics—most notably, Kindle e-readers, Echo devices, Fire tablets, and Fire TVs.
American International Pictures, LLC (AIP or American International Productions) is an American film production company owned by Amazon MGM Studios. In its original operating period, AIP was an independent film production and distribution company known for producing and releasing films from 1955 until 1980, a year after its acquisition by Filmways in 1979.
It was formed on April 2, 1954, as American Releasing Corporation (ARC) by former Realart Pictures Inc. sales manager James H. Nicholson and entertainment lawyer Samuel Z. Arkoff and their first release was the 1953 UK documentary film Operation Malaya. It was dedicated to releasing low-budget films packaged as double features, primarily of interest to the teenagers of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. (also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, commonly referred to as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, commonly shortened to MGM) is an American film and television production and distribution company headquartered in Culver City, California. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was founded on April 17, 1924, and has been owned by the Amazon MGM Studios subsidiary of Amazon since 2022.
MGM was formed by Marcus Loew by combining Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Pictures into one company. It hired a number of well-known actors as contract players—its slogan was "more stars than there are in heaven"—and soon became Hollywood's most prestigious filmmaking company, producing popular musical films and winning many Academy Awards. MGM also owned film studios, movie lots, movie theaters, and technical production facilities. Its most prosperous era, from 1926 to 1959, was bracketed by two productions of Ben Hur. It divested itself of the Loews movie theater chain and, in 1956, expanded into television production.
Amazon Prime Video, known simply as Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming television service owned by Amazon. The service primarily distributes films and television series produced or co-produced by Amazon MGM Studios or licensed to Amazon, as Amazon Originals, with the service also hosting content from other providers, content add-ons, live sporting events, and video rental and purchasing services. Prime Video is offered both as a stand-alone service and as part of Amazon's Prime subscription. Amazon Prime Video is the second-most-subscribed video on demand streaming media service in the United States, after Netflix. The service has around 205 million paid memberships worldwide.
Operating worldwide, the service may require a full Prime subscription to be accessed. In countries like the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany, the service can be accessed without a full Prime subscription, whereas in Australia, Canada, France, India, Turkey, and Italy, it can only be accessed through a dedicated website. Additionally, Prime Video offers a content add-on service in the form of channels, called Amazon Channels, or Prime Video Channels, which allow users to subscribe to additional video subscription services from other content providers within Prime Video.