By Tony O’ Riley-
Amazon has teamed up with the National Theatre to stream four high-profile live-recorded stage shows, including Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag.
The shows, which include Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller in 2011’s Frankenstein, will be made available to Amazon’s Prime Video customers in the UK and Ireland from 11 June.
The two other performances are Cumberbatch as Hamlet, filmed at the Barbican in 2015, and Ian McKellen on Stage, a solo show the Lord of the Rings actor toured in 2019 to mark his 80th birthday.
“As theatre-makers continue to be impacted by the pandemic, this will enable us to further support the artists behind the work,” said Lisa Burger, the joint chief executive at the National Theatre, credited for beaming theatre performances into British cinemas for the past 12 years. “Audiences will have the best seats in the house.”
Amazon Studios donated £500,000 in 2020 to the Theatre Community Fund, launched by The Crown actor Olivia Colman, Waller-Bridge and Francesca Moody to provide hardship grants to theatre workers and freelancers.
“The National Theatre have brought us some of the most memorable theatrical productions of the last decade, and we are delighted to give our customers across the UK and Ireland an opportunity to experience them,” said Martin Backlund, head of content for the UK, Ireland and Nordics at Prime Video. “The cream of UK acting talent so often started their career in theatre, and we want to shine a light on the incredible heritage we have here.”
The deal comes a week after British cinemas re-opened their doors for the first time since last year as the government continues to ease Covid restrictions. Cinema owners enjoyed their strongest opening weekend in the UK since movie theatres were first forced to shut in March last year. The estimated £7m in ticket sales, led by Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, beat the previous pandemic high of £6m taken by Tenet when it was released last August.
The news comes after Amazon revealed earlier today that it is in talks to buy MGM, the Hollywood studio behind the James Bond and Rocky franchises, for as much as $9bn (£6.3bn) as it battles against rivals including Netflix and Disney+ in the
MGM owns 4,000 film titles, such as Silence of the Lambs, Rain Man, RoboCop and The Terminator, is about to be owned by the tech giant, whose business aspirations knows no boundaries. Disney continually conquering the world with its monopoly and Netflix’s status as the ultimate household name, not to mention Apple TV+ and its original content, Amazon and MGM would be a powerful combo going forward.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer which owns storied franchises such as the James Bond and Rocky stable of films is also set to boost Amazon’s catalogue and enhance its Prime Video service to compete against the likes of Netflix, Hulu and Disney+.
The combined AT&T-Discovery company could easily reach $20 billion a year on original content. Last year, Amazon spent around $11 billion on its own content. An MGM deal could change.
Rumours emerged last year about MGM was on the hunt for a streaming platform to buy the distribution rights to No Time To Die, likely a part-home entertainment, part-theatrical deal similar to Apple and Paramount Pictures.
Earlier this month rival AT&T announced it was merging WarnerMedia and Discovery to create a new streaming service and the second largest media company in the world in terms of revenue, after Disney.
The ecommerce company said recently it has reached 200 million subscribers on Prime Video. In December, MGM said it was exploring a sale. It said it had tapped investment banks Morgan Stanley and LionTree LLC, and started a formal sale process.
The studio is said to have $2 billion of long-term debt, only made worse by No Time To Die‘s continual delays. However, even including debt, it’s still valued at more than $5 billion, with share prices rising in recent days due to chatter of a deal.