In 2021, after months of attempting to find a buyer at the behest of its controlling shareholder, it was announced that Amazon had agreed to buy MGM for $8.45 billion. This was Amazon's second-largest acquisition, behind its $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods in 2017. MGM will continue to operate as a label (going as far as to rename Amazon's existing studio, Amazon Studios, to Amazon MGM Studios in October 2023), while Amazon will gain access to MGM's vast catalog of 4,000+ films and 17,000+ television shows for its Prime Video service. The move was seen as a defensive move by Amazon, who has been struggling as of late to catch up with Netflix and Disney+/Hulu in terms of mainstream appeal (despite boasting 175 million users as of April 2021, little of their programming showed up on Nielsen's top 10 streaming charts). MGM had also seen their potential suitors narrowed over the last few years, with all of them dealing with merger and acquisition frenzies of their own and further tightening antitrust scrutiny (not to mention the Coronavirus Pandemic-induced recession making them financially weary of pursuing further expansion); Amazon, with its multi-faceted conglomeration, revenue streams and comparatively smaller production operations, was the only credible suitor left. The deal officially closed on March 17, 2022, with Amazon promising that films would either go to theaters or onto Prime Video on a case-by-case basis. That same year, MGM announced that it would Mehr sehen