Amazon acquiring MGM Studios will not impact cinema business, says expert

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The online shopping giant Amazon's acquisition of Hollywood TV and movie studio MGM, which has on its content slate upcoming films like House of Gucci, No Time to Die, Respect, and The Addams Family 2, may not impact the cinema business in India.

According to analyst Karan Taurani, Vice President, Elara Capital, while Amazon acquiring MGM will increase the platform's content depth, it will not impact the cinema business in India.

"Don’t see much of an impact of the above on content flow for India as Indian cinema has the scale to generate healthy collections at box office. We saw this with the likes of Warner Bros, which released its films on hybrid mode or OTT globally, but released the films Wonder Woman 1984, Godzilla (vs Kong), Tenet only in cinemas (in India)," he said.

Godzilla vs Kong was able to mint Rs 41 crore in the first week of its release despite the COVID-19 situation.

Taurani pointed out that due to the scale of opportunity Indian cinema has for such films, no production house would want to lose on the above opportunity. He said that due to dubbing of content into multiple languages (Hindi and regional languages), new marketing initiatives (having voiceovers of leading Indian actors ) and new forms of scripting for regional and Hindi languages so that audiences can relate to the subject, theatrical window is more lucrative for Hollywood ventures.

In addition, he thinks that Amazon’s acquisition of studios will only impact the window period of over-the-top (OTT) platform and satellite in global markets where it is around 120 -150 days. However, in India the window already is low at 40-60 days, he noted.

This is why he expects more large films to hit either the simultaneous release route or lower window period globally but not in India.

"I believe there is a very low likelihood of simultaneous release of a Hollywood film in India through a PPV (pay per view) format as piracy is a big threat and Indian audience pay for an overall experience of watching the film in a big screen including family outing," he added.