It’s been four years since Amazon bought MGM for $8.5 billion. But coming off the blockbuster success of this year’s hit movie Project Hail Mary, Hollywood has become a lucrative business for the e-commerce giant.
Prime Video, Amazon’s streaming service, “has emerged as a significant business with a revenue run rate in the tens of billions of dollars and is now profitable in its own right,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said on the quarterly earnings call on Thursday. Jassy had previously told investors in May that Prime Video was profitable, but being on track to generate tens of billions is a new detail.
Amazon said its movie studio, Amazon MGM Studios, has brought in more than $1.2 billion in global box office sales so far this year, helped by hits like Project Hail Mary and Verity. Project Hail Mary grossed an estimated $684 million worldwide, according to The Numbers. Starring Ryan Gosling and based on Andy Weir’s novel, the film opened in theaters in March and became Amazon MGM Studios’ highest-grossing release, according to entertainment reports. (It also had at least one notable flop this year: Melania.)
