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In a landmark mega deal, Amazon is acquiring MGM Holdings — whose storied studio boasts one of the largest film and TV libraries — in a bid to turbocharge its Prime membership offering to customers and potentially mine intellectual property of franchises such as James Bond and Rocky.  The deal, pending regulatory approval, values the studio at $8.45 billion. “The real financial value behind this deal is the treasure trove of IP in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM’s talented team. It’s very exciting and provides so many opportunities for high-quality storytelling,” said Mike Hopkins, senior vp Prime Video and Amazon Studios, in unveiling the buy.   The acquisition, revealed just days after AT&T announced a $43 billion plan on May 17 to spin off its WarnerMedia division, including HBO and Warner Bros., to Discovery, marks the latest major consolidation to rattle the entertainment industry. Amazon, led by CEO Andy Jassy and founder...

The film, with a $250 million-plus budget , marks the last in a deal with MGM, which is expected to court many distributors as a major franchise could change hands. James Bond is about to become a free agent, setting off a scramble among studios eager to win distribution rights to one of Hollywood's few seemingly gold-plated franchise. Sony Pictures opens Spectre , the 24th official Bond movie, on Nov. 6 in North America (the Brits get an early look Oct. 26), as the 007 adventure chases box-office records established by 2012's Skyfall , which grossed $1.1 billion worldwide to become the biggest film in the series' 53-year history. With early tracking pointing toward an $80 million-plus domestic bow, the movie has Skyfall's $88 million debut in its sights. But even if the film proves a big success, as most believe it will, it could mark the end of the Sony/MGM collaboration . Spectre is the last in a two-picture deal that Sony struck in 2011 with MGM, which co...

“ BALLS OUT ” GETS NORTH AND LATIN AMERICAN DISTRIBUTION The “Best Guilty Pleasure” award winner at the 2014 Seattle International Film Festival, BALLS OUT stars  Jake Lacy  (”Girls”),  Nikki Reed  (Twilight Franchise),  Kate McKinnon  (“SNL”),  Jay Pharoah  (”SNL”),  Beck Bennett  (”SNL”), and  Nick Kocher . It was produced by Russell Wayne Groves, Andrew Lee, Bradley Jackson, David Ward, and Red Sanders. Tucker Moore, Jason Netter, and Spence Jackson serve as executive producers. THE ANDREW DISNEY-DIRECTED FILM WILL RELEASE JUNE 19th IN US THEATERS AND ON VOD BALLS OUT , a comedy that premiered under the name INTRAMURAL at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, gets North American distribution through Orion Releasing , a company focused on multi-platform releases via specialized theatrical runs and premium video on demand services, and Latin American distribution through MGM . Directed by Andrew Disney and written by Bradley Ja...

Read The Latest News Regarding The Beloved Franchise Story by David Clark In 1994 a movie named Stargate was released that was almost immediately considered a success; however, nobody dreamed of how far that movie would go. In the two decades following the release a franchise was born that consisted of cartoons, comics, books, movies, and television shows. Now, 20 years after the release of the original movie, Stargate is being infused with new life in the form of a reboot. The original concept and screenwriting for the 1994 Stargate movie was done by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin . For those that do not know these two individuals they have spent time in the industry as actors, writers, producers, and directors who most recently were in the news for the successful greenlight on the upcoming Independence Day sequel. In an interview with Devlin he expressed excitement at the opportunity for improving the vision of the franchise while adding to the storied legacy that...

Just in time for Halloween, Metro Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and Fox Home Entertainment re-release 13 cult classic horror films on Blu-ray and DVD September 9. Each iconic movie will be decked out with an all-new, limited-edition artist-rendered faceplate by Skuzzles. See all the titles and  faceplates after the Jump... 1. Jeepers Creepers 2. Child’s Play 3. Misery 4. Last House on the Left 5. Return of the Living Dead 6. Amityville Horror 7. Invasion of the Body Snatchers 8. Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 9. Carrie 10. Silence of the Lambs 11. Species 12. Killer Klowns From Outer Space 13. Teen Wolf Release Date: September 9, 2014 Price: $5-7 DVD; $7-$8 BD Outlets: Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Best Buy Canada, Walmart Canada, and other major retailers nationwide Please Leave A Comment-

Deadline is reporting MGM, Paramount and Timur Bekmambetov set a February 26, 2016, release date on an epic remake of Ben-Hur ; have they found their chariot driver in Tom Hiddleston ? I hear that he’s the one the studios are courting to play Judah Ben-Hur in the adaptation of the 1880 Lew Wallace novel Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ , which was the biggest-selling novel of its time until it was eclipsed by Gone With The Wind . Hiddleston isn't being fitted for a toga just yet. He has other projects vying for his services, including the MGM pic Me Before You. Keith Clarke, who scripted the Peter Weir-directed The Way Back, wrote the script that MGM pounced on after that company got ambitious following its emergence from bankruptcy and huge hits in Skyfall and The Hobbit. Mark Burnett and Roma Downey joined Sean Daniel and Joni Levin as producers, with Clarke and Jason Brown exec producing. Oscar-winning 12 Years A Slave scribe John Ridley wrote the last draft. MGM released ...

MGM is in talks with Wanted helmer Timur Bekmambetov to helm Ben-Hur , a new adaptation of the 1880 Lew Wallace novel Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ , which in its time outsold every book but The Bible until it was eclipsed by Gone With The Wind . This all got set in motion after MGM bought a Ben-Hur spec by Keith Clarke (he scripted the Peter Weir-directed The Way Back), a package that came with Sean Daniel and Joni Levin attached to produce, and Clarke and Jason Brown exec producing. This happened last January, right after MGM got new funding and was flush with proceeds from the 007 pic Skyfall and The Hobbit. I have been chasing the possible deal with Bekmambetov for the past two weeks, and it seemed intriguing enough as another Biblical epic moving forward that I felt it was worth noting despite the fact they haven’t reached financial terms and I don’t know for certain that they will. MGM actually released the 1959 Charlton Heston-starrer Ben-Hur, as well as the 1925 silent film...

Red Dawn  Review By: MattInRC Make sure to follow MattInRC on  Twitter  for all his reviews and other exciting news. Red Dawn is a remake that vacillates between gritty war feature and bubble-gum drama, doing neither particularly well. In the genre of war movies, there are generally two kinds that Hollywood produces: ones that display the heavy trauma associated with war; and the mindless, unrealistic action flick that insults our intelligence with its implausibility. Both have their detractors - who can watch Saving Private Ryan more than once per year without wanting to slash their wrists for displaying war in such a graphic manner? In the latter category, the action is so unbelievable - whether it be people surviving a massive explosion or somehow beating someone twice their size - that you never really feel for the characters when they experience difficulty, thus losing any buy-in and therefore interest. Wedged somewhere in-between these is Red Dawn,...

We have another great giveaway this week. RED DAWN remake opens on November 21, 2012! And we have 5 prize packs to randomly give away. In  RED DAWN , a city in Washington state awakens to the surreal sight of foreign paratroopers dropping from the sky – shockingly, the U.S. has been invaded and their hometown is the initial target. Quickly and without warning, the citizens find themselves prisoners and their town under enemy occupation. Determined to fight back, a group of young patriots seek refuge in the surrounding woods, training and reorganizing themselves into a guerilla group of fighters. Taking inspiration from their high school mascot, they call themselves the Wolverines, banding together to protect one another, liberate their town from its captors, and take back their freedom. Starring CHRIS HEMSWORTH (Thor, The Avengers), JOSH PECK (Drake & Josh, The Wackness), JOSH HUTCHERSON (The Hunger Games), ADRIANNE PALICKI (Friday Night Lights, upcomin...

Win your tickets to see an advance screening for RED DAWN ! The screening is on November 13, 2012 - 7:00 PM in Sacramento at United Artist Arden Fair 6. See CHRIS HEMSWORTH (Thor, The Avengers), JOSH PECK (Drake & Josh, The Wackness), JOSH HUTCHERSON (The Hunger Games), ADRIANNE PALICKI (Friday Night Lights, upcoming GI Joe: Retaliation), ISABEL LUCAS (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, upcoming Knight of Cups), CONNOR CRUISE (Seven Pounds), JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN (Watchmen) in RED DAWN ! In  RED DAWN , a city in Washington state awakens to the surreal sight of foreign paratroopers dropping from the sky – shockingly, the U.S. has been invaded and their hometown is the initial target. Quickly and without warning, the citizens find themselves prisoners and their town under enemy occupation. Determined to fight back, a group of young patriots seek refuge in the surrounding woods, training and reorganizing themselves into a guerilla group of fighters. Taking insp...

Here is the first official trailer for the remake of RED DAWN. We were able to get our hands also on the first poster for the film. The film was scheduled to be released on November 24, 2010, but was shelved due to MGM's financial troubles, and is now set for Thanksgiving 2012. See CHRIS HEMSWORTH (Thor, The Avengers), JOSH PECK (Drake & Josh, The Wackness), JOSH HUTCHERSON (The Hunger Games), ADRIANNE PALICKI (Friday Night Lights, upcoming GI Joe: Retaliation), ISABEL LUCAS (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, upcoming Knight of Cups), CONNOR CRUISE (Seven Pounds), JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN (Watchmen) in RED DAWN ! Watch the trailer after the Jump... In Red Dawn, a city in Washington state awakens to the surreal sight of foreign paratroopers dropping from the sky – shockingly, the U.S. has been invaded and their hometown is the initial target. Quickly and without warning, the citizens find themselves prisoners and their town under enemy occupation. Determined t...

CHECK OUT THIS FIRST LOOK AT THE MUST-SEE ACTION MOVIE OF THE FALL via USATODAY ! Get a taste of what happens when freedom is threatened… THE WOLVERINES UNITE to get vengeance in RED DAWN : See CHRIS HEMSWORTH (Thor, The Avengers), JOSH PECK (Drake & Josh, The Wackness), JOSH HUTCHERSON (The Hunger Games), ADRIANNE PALICKI (Friday Night Lights, upcoming GI Joe: Retaliation), ISABEL LUCAS (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, upcoming Knight of Cups), CONNOR CRUISE (Seven Pounds), JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN (Watchmen) in RED DAWN! In Red Dawn, a city in Washington state awakens to the surreal sight of foreign paratroopers dropping from the sky – shockingly, the U.S. has been invaded and their hometown is the initial target. Quickly and without warning, the citizens find themselves prisoners and their town under enemy occupation. Determined to fight back, a group of young patriots seek refuge in the surrounding woods, training and reorganizing themselves into a guerilla grou...

Chalk one more title up on the board marked “Remakes.” Though this one is more of the wheel of cinematic life turning, as The Magnificent Seven is remade by Hollywood. MGM has decided to dip once more into the cupboard of title rights it owns and is now developing a new version of John Sturges' 1960 classic with Tom Cruise attached to star. Before you get all up in high dudgeon about the desecration of a classic, remember that The Magnificent Seven is itself a remake of Seven Samurai . This one is still at a very embryonic stage, with no director or writer attached, though Variety has heard that the company is even now kicking off the hunt for someone to scribble the script. So we don’t yet know whether it will exactly follow the plot of the original, which sees a group of American gunmen hired to protect a Mexican village from a group of bandits. There’s also no word on which of the movie’s meaty characters Cruise is interested in. He already has plenty of active and po...

It isn’t a big surprise, but MGM has formally offered Julianne Moore the nightmarish religious fanatic mother in the Kimberly Peirce-directed remake of the 1976 film Carrie. Chloe Moretz is already set to play the title character, a young woman whose devastating telepathic powers rear up when she reaches puberty. Kevin Misher is producing. Moore’s name has been in the mix for a while, but at the time MGM maintained it was talking to numerous actresses. Now, they’ve sent Moore the script and a pay or play offer to play Margaret White, the role that Piper Laurie rode to an Oscar nomination. (Moore just got done playing Sarah Palin in the Jay Roach-directed HBO film Game Change, but Margaret White makes the former vice presidential candidate seem like a raging liberal.) The film is based on the 1974 Stephen King novel that was first filmed by director Brian De Palma. Sissy Spacek played Carrie White, and both she and Laurie got Oscar noms. Please Leave A Comment- Source- Deadline ...

Updated:  Deadline reports that Kinnaman is now confirmed for the role. Even as we write this, MGM is paying a group of criminals to blast him to pieces, whereupon their best scientists will merge his head with a robot body (they're going the lose the arm) to become the future of law enforcement... While he burst on to the international scene playing a man caught up in crime in Daniel Espinosa’s Snabba Cash, Joel Kinnaman has been spending a lot of his time acting as a police detective in the US telly remake of The Killing. Now all that law enforcement experience might come in handy, because MGM has offered him the lead in the Robocop reboot. Elite Squad director Jose Padilha is aboard to call the shots and he’s been flipping through the usual go-to list looking for the right star to fill Alex Murphy’s metal helmet. There were brief, unsubstantiated rumours floating around about Russell Crowe, and Michael Fassbender was said to be in the running. But now Kinnaman, who l...

MGM has hired Gran Torino screenwriter Nick Schenk to work on the screenplay for RoboCop . Jose Padilha is attached to direct the action sci-fi reboot. The CAA-repped Schenk had been working with Padilha, who co-wrote and directed Elite Squad: The Enemy Within , on the action thriller Tri-Border. The writer also has the original drama The Judge set up at Warner Bros. with Team Downey producing. MGM has been developing a new take on the RoboCop franchise, which launched with the 1987 film directed by Paul Verhoeven, for years. The studio is hoping for a summer start, but no one has yet been cast in the title role. Please Leave A Comment- Source- THR

With the 23rd installment in the James Bond series set to begin shooting today – an impressive feat, considering the film almost didn’t happen at all thanks to MGM’s financial woes – director Sam Mendes and the production team felt this was as good a time as any to have a press conference revealing some key details about the film. And while a lot of the reveals were things we already knew, at least we can finally stop calling the movie Bond 23 . Yes, the latest entry in the longest running movie franchise in history finally has a name. The new film will be entitled Skyfall, which astute Bond fans will realize is a name not tied to any of Ian Fleming’s novels or stories. It’s a title that “has emotional context which will be revealed in the film,” according to producer Michael Wilson. We like the title. It’s a much better name than the last film’s ludicrous Quantum of Solace. For those wondering what Skyfall might relate to, a synopsis has turned up: “Bond’s loyalty to M is te...

Recently freed from a crushing $4 billion debt, MGM’s new studio management in February told Hollywood’s talent agencies it was moving ahead with plans to reboot five movie franchises, including Steven Spielberg’s 1982 horror hit, Poltergeist . The word is  that the studio has offered Pulitzer-prize winning playwright cum screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire ( Rabbit Hole ) the job of reimagining the paranormal classic. Lindsay-Abaire confirmed he’d been approached by MGM and offered the job, but emphasized that no deal had been reached and stressed that he was not yet even sure he wanted to take it. (Abaire’s latest play, Good People, starring Frances McDormand, just wrapped its limited engagement on Broadway a little over a week ago; both People and McDormand are nominated for Tony Awards.) It’s understandable of playwrights to be wary of big studios. But MGM’s new bosses — Spyglass Entertainment principals Roger Birnbaum and Gary Barber — are co-financiers who know something ...

Hot off of Fast Five , Vin Diesel has come aboard to star and produce The Machine , an action comedy from MGM. While MGM’s reputation around town is that of a remake factory, mining its library, Machine is an original project coming from Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, the writers of Night at the Museum who also worked with Diesel on his action comedy The Pacifier. According to MGM, Diesel will play “a human-like machine created in secrecy by the Pentagon as the world's first true ultimate weapon. Twenty years after the project was buried and decommissioned for reasons unknown, The Machine is discovered by a kid who befriends him. When the government learns it has been reactivated, the Machine must protect the family harboring him. The project has no director but MGM says its eying a fall start. With the massive success of Fast Five -- $458 million worldwide and counting – many of the cast of the Universal movie are finding themselves back in the spotlight. Diesel’...

MGM is finally in a position to bring Chucky back to life, with the horror reboot Child's Play heading into production. Child's Play first hit theaters in 1988, spawning the sequels Child's Play 2, Child's Play 3, Bride Of Chucky, and Seed of Chucky . The remake had been in development for several years, with a script already written by Don Mancini, who also wrote all the previous movies in the Chucky franchise. The hold-up on the remake was apparently due to rights issues by MGM and Universal. MGM has the rights to the original Child's Play, while Universal retained rights to the sequels. Apparently, a deal has been made between the two studios. Production is said to begin on the remake sometime later this year, with Brad Dourif returning to voice Chucky. This new project is said to be more of a reboot, with a darker tone and less comedic elements (what's more funny than a Cabbage Patch doll trying to kill a kid, though?). However, none of this has been ...