The James Bond, Rocky and RoboCop movies now all belong to Amazon. The company has closed its $8.45 billion takeover of storied movie and TV studio MGM.
European Union antitrust regulators unconditionally approved the deal this week. They determined there wasn't a great deal of overlap between the two companies, and that "MGM's content cannot be considered as must-have" compared with other studios.
Amazon had reportedly given the Federal Trade Commission, which was said to have been reviewing the buyout, a deadline of mid-March to challenge or approve the acquisition. If the agency didn't file a legal challenge by then, Amazon would have been free to move forward with the purchase.
MGM "will complement Prime Video and Amazon Studios’ work in delivering a diverse offering of entertainment choices to customers," Amazon said in a press release. The studio has more than 4,000 films and 17,000 episodes of TV to its name, along with 180 Oscars and 100 Emmy Awards. MGM movies include classics such as Thelma & Louise, The Silence of the Lambs, The Wizard of Oz, The Magnificent Seven and Raging Bull.
Amazon will still release James Bond movies in theaters instead of hanging onto them as Prime Video exclusives (though it wouldn't be surprising to see Bond reading by the pool with a Kindle in his next outing). It's likely that the vast majority of MGM movies and TV shows will wind up on Prime Video following theatrical runs and after agreements with other streaming platforms expire.
European Union officials have unconditionally rubber stamped Amazon's $845 million bid to buy famed movie and TV studio MGM. The European Commission's antitrust regulators determined there was limited overlap between the companies and said the merger wouldn't severely reduce competition in the theatrical film and audio-visual content markets.
"The Commission found that MGM's upstream activities as a producer and licensor of AV content are limited compared to other market players' activities; MGM's content cannot be considered as must-have; and a wide variety of alternative content exists," the EC said. It noted MGM's movies account for a limited share of box office revenue in the European Economic Area and that "overall MGM is not among the top production studios, despite its rights over successful film franchises such as James Bond."
Amazon still requires the green light from the Federal Trade Commission before it can close the deal, which was announced last May. Recent reports suggested the FTC was planning to challenge the merger with an antitrust lawsuit. However, that requires a majority vote by commissioners.
The FTC currently has two Democrat and two Republican commissioners. The Information reported that while they have reached a bipartisan consensus on some issues, a vote on an Amazon-MGM suit could be split along party lines. The Senate has yet to vote on Alvaro Bedoya's nomination to the commission.
In any case, the deadline for a decision on the proposed MGM buyout is said to be fast approaching, reportedly sometime in mid-March. If the FTC doesn't mount a legal challenge by then, Amazon could be free to proceed with the merger.
Netflix has announced that it'll serve as home to a definitive documentary on Pamela Anderson's life, a month after the limited series Pam & Tommy debuted on Hulu. According to Entertainment Weekly, Anderson vowed never to watch the Hulu series, which focuses on the actress' short marriage with Tommy Lee and the theft and illegal distribution of their sex tape, or even its trailer. While the Hulu series was created without the involvement or even the permission of the actress, Anderson herself promoted the Netflix documentary on Instagram.
"Not a victim, but a survivor and alive to tell the real story," she said in a handwritten note she posted on the app. The documentary film will feature interviews with Anderson, along with previously unreleased archival footage and journals. Netflix promises that the pop culture icon will "set the record straight" and that the movie, directed by Ryan White (The Keepers), will paint an "intimate portrait" of her. In comparison, the Hulu series was based on a 2014 Rolling Stone article and fictionalized some parts of the actual events.
Anderson's camp also reportedly took issue with the fact that the Hulu series used clips from the actual sex tape, which became one of the first ever viral sex videos. According to The Washington Post, that tape demonstrated how powerful the internet is, even during its early days, as a platform for the sex industry and content distribution as a whole.
While Anderson's sex tape debacle went down in the '90s, the rivalry between streaming giants prompt them to find new ways to get into current discussions and events. Netflix and Hulu each released their own Fyre Festival documentaries in the past, for instance, as well as their own takes on Britney Spears' life and career.
Pamela Anderson is ready to tell her story in a new documentary.
The film, which has been in the making for several years, will feature the pop culture icon setting the record straight as she looks back on her professional path and her personal journey. pic.twitter.com/vSNvsQPE48
Sony’s upcoming live-action adaptation of Twisted Metalhas found a home. NBCUniversal announced on Monday it will stream the series on Peacock. News that Sony’s PlayStation Productions unit was developing an adaptation of the Twisted Metal franchise came at the start of last year.
In September, we learned Altered Carbon and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier star Anthony Mackie would play the role of series protagonist John Doe, a smart-talking milkman with no memory of his past but a penchant for driving as fast as he talks. PlayStation Productions is billing the show as an action-comedy, with Cobra Kai scribeMichael Jonathan Smith serving as showrunner, writer and executive producer on the show.
NBCUniversal didn’t say when Twisted Metal would premiere on Peacock. However, the show is just one of several properties Sony is in the process of adapting for television and film. It’s also working on a Ghost of Tsushima movie that John Wick’s Chad Stahelski will direct, and then there’s The Last of Us. HBO Programming President Casey Bloys recently told The Hollywood Reporter the series wouldn’t premiere in 2022.
Audiences will get another chance to watch CODA, the first Apple Original movie nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, in theaters. Apple is re-releasing the film, which is about a deaf family, in a limited run of free screenings with open captions. Directed and written by Sian Heder and featuring a primarily deaf cast, the film received three Oscar nods in total. Heder, who adapted the movie from a French film called La Famille Bélier, is also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. Troy Kotsur is also nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and is the first deaf man to earn that distinction.
The film follows Ruby (played Emilia Jones) , a high school student who navigates life as the only hearing member of a deaf family in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Kotsur plays her father, a struggling fisherman attempting to connect with his daughter. Ruby’s mother is played by Marlee Matlin (best known from Children of a Lesser God and The L Word), and her older brother is played by Daniel Durant, who starred in the 2015 Broadway revival of Spring Awakening.
The screenings will run in all major cities in the US and London, beginning Friday, February 25 through Sunday, February 27. You can view a list of showtimes and theater locations here.
There are worse movies than Uncharted, especially when it comes to the seemingly cursed genre of video game adaptations. But as I struggled to stay awake through the finale — yet another weightless action sequence where our heroes quip, defy physics and never feel like they're in any genuine danger — I couldn't help but wonder why the film was so aggressively average.
Sony Pictures
The PlayStation franchise started out as a Tomb Raider clone starring a dude who wasn't Indiana Jones. But, starting with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, the games tapped into the language of action movies to put you in the center of innovative set pieces. They were cinematic in ways that few titles were in the early 2010s. But going in the opposite direction — bringing aspects of those games into a movie — doesn't work nearly as well.
Director Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland, Venom), along with screenwriters Rafe Lee Judkins, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, have crafted an origin story for the treasure hunter Nathan Drake (Tom Holland). It hits the notes you're expecting — his childhood as an orphan, his first team-up with his partner Victor "Sully" Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg), and a globe-trotting treasure hunt that defies logic — but it's all just a Cliff's Notes version of what we've seen in the games. And for a franchise that was already a watered-down version of Indiana Jones, a movie adaptation just highlights all of its inherent flaws. Watching Uncharted made me long for the basic pleasures of Nicholas Cage's National Treasure – at least that Indy clone had personality.
Even the iconic action scenes don’t hit as hard. The film opens mid free-fall, as Drake realizes he just fell out of a plane. Discerning viewers will instantly recognize the sequence from Uncharted 3. We watch as he hops across falling cargo (and wonder if that’s even possible while everything is falling), but the entire scene feels like Tom Holland is going on the world’s most extreme Disney World ride. Without the rumble of the Dualshock 3 controller in my hand, and my responsibility over Drake’s impending death, there just aren’t any stakes. It’s particularly unexciting compared to what we’ve seen in the recent Mission Impossible movies. Tom Cruise (and skydiving camera man Craig O'Brien) jumped out of an actual plane several times for our entertainment!
Still, it's somewhat surprising that this adaptation exists at all. Sony has been trying to develop an Uncharted film since 2008, starting with a loftier iteration by arthouse auteur David O. Russell. That version was going to star Wahlberg as an older Nathan Drake, as we see him in the games, and focus on the idea of family. But the project ended up changing hands several times over the last decade. By the time it was actually gearing up for production in 2020, Wahlberg had aged out of the starring role and into the older sidekick spot. (Sorry, Super Cool Mack Daddy, it happens to all of us.)
After we've seen so many video game films completely miss the mark, like Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City and Assassin's Creed, I'm starting to wonder if there's some sort of secret to making a good adaptation. Different audiences want different things, after all. Game fans typically want to see the characters and sequences they love so much legitimized on film. Discerning movie geeks may be comparing adaptations to other, usually better, films. And studio executives just want existing intellectual property that they can churn out to an undiscerning public.
There are a handful of memorable video game films, but they mostly seem like flukes. The original Mortal Kombat was iconic because of its killer soundtrack and (at the time) cutting-edge special effects. Werewolves Within doesn't have much to do with the VR title it's based on, aside from its name. And Sonic the Hedgehog was a blast, but that was mostly due to its lead performances.
As an avid gamer and cinephile, I'll never give up on hoping for successful adaptations. But it could just be that the two mediums are a bit incompatible. A film can never capture the interactive magic and freedom you get from a game. And when you're playing something, heavy-handed cut scenes and direction can often take you out of the experience (unless you’re Hideo Kojima, in which case gamers will argue it’s all a work of genius).
With its cinematic roots, Uncharted had a better shot at a decent adaptation than most games. It’s just a shame that, for a series that’s about exploring new lands and discovering forgotten treasure, it offers nothing new.
Apple has commissioned famous Korean director Park Chan-wook to create a short film as part of its "Shot on iPhone" campaign. Park, perhaps best known for the action thriller flick Oldboy, used an iPhone 13 Pro to shoot a 20-minute fantasy martial arts movie entitled Life Is But a Dream, which the tech giant has released on YouTube.
The film starts off with horror-like elements after an undertaker digs up a grave to steal a coffin and awakens the ghost of a swordsman, who then awakens the ghost of a hero who fell after saving the undertaker's village. After that, it becomes a blend of action, romance, dark comedy, dancing and pansori, a Korean genre of musical storytelling.
Apple has also released a behind-the-scenes clip alongside the short film showing Park and his crew using an iPhone 13 Pro on gimbals and mounts for the shoot. The crew specifically praised the phone's ability to quickly shift focus, blur the background and shoot in low light. In the behind-the-scenes footage released alongside the film, Park said it's a story he's always wanted to tell and that he didn't have a specific camera in mind when he conceptualized it.
Just last month the original Baby Shark video and its impossibly catchy song set a record with 10 billion views on YouTube. Now, Baby Shark is going to become a movie with a release date planned for 2023, Paramount announced.
The film will be produced by Nickelodeon Animation and creator The Pinkfong company, but there are no details about the script, plot, etc. The character has been seen in the cinema before, as Pinkfong and Baby Shark’s Space Adventure had a limited run when it came to Netflix. However, that ran for just an hour, while Paramount described the upcoming release as a "feature-length film."
Baby Shark was also developed into a Korean TV series called Baby Shark's Big Show, which debuted on Nickelodeon in December of 2020. The show was announced by Paramount Plus as part of an upcoming slate of kids/youth programs, including a Dora the Explorer series, new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies and three new films in the SpongeBob SquarePants Universe.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 won't hit theaters until April 8th, but a third movie is already in the works. Paramount confirmed that Sonic 3 is now in development, along with a Paramount+ streaming series based on Sonic sidekick Knuckles, starring Idris Elba. "We are delighted to announce that the third Sonic theatrical film and the first live action Sonic series for Paramount+ are being actively developed," said Sega CEO Haruki Satomi in a tweet.
Sonic 2's first trailer confirmed the existence of the titular character's new sidekick Tails, voiced by Colleen O'Shaughnessy. We also saw the return of the first movie's villain, Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carry), who's seeking to gain the Chaos Emeralds. Aiding his quest is none other than Knuckles the Echidna, who demonstrates his powers and posh Idris Elba voice. Elba will also voice Knuckles in the streaming series, set to arrive in 2023.
The first Sonic film was one of the most successful video game adaptations yet, making the launch of a sequel inevitable. Paramount must be pretty confident about that to have already announced Sonic 3 and a streaming series to boot. The trailer looked promising, but we'll find out when it arrives on April 8th.
It looks like Netflix is headed to Rapture. The company says it's teaming up with 2K and Take-Two Interactive for a film adaptation of the BioShock series. No other details are available as yet, but based on the image Netflix shared in its announcement, it wouldn't be a surprise to see it tackling the first game.
Netflix, 2K and Take-Two Interactive are partnering to produce a film adaptation of the renowned video game franchise BioShock.
There's a good chance that BioShock will translate well to the big screen (if Netflix does, in fact, opt for a theatrical release). The original 2007 game has a striking Art Deco/underwater setting and an unforgettable story. That's not to mention great characters — though it remains to be seen whether the filmmakers can truly capture the terror of a Big Daddy charging toward you.
