Doug Liman still has a bone to pick with Amazon MGM Studios over what happened to “Road House,” but he and others may put that bad blood aside if Amazon is as serious about expanding as it’s hinting around town. As first reported in Reuters , Amazon and MGM want to ramp up to 16 theatrical releases by the year 2027, which a source with knowledge told IndieWire is accurate. That’s more than double where the companies are at now, with just six theatrical titles planned in 2024.
The 16 titles also doesn’t include any movies Amazon would release outside the U.S., the movies that it might acquire from other studios (sometimes in the 5-6 movies range), or even include the movies it intends to release directly to streaming on Prime Video.
That would be a major increase in output, and 16 releases (it’s unclear and unlikely they’d all be wide releases) would put them in the ballpark of traditional Hollywood studios like Universal Pictures, as well as help it rival Netflix’s overall film output. Amazon Prime Video chief Mike Hopkins is quoted in the Reuters piece about Amazon’s ambitions to develop as a real media company, something more than just a perk for Amazon Prime subscribers who want free next day shipping, and he said that vision came from Jeff Bezos himself. “We don’t want to have a ‘Saltburn’ and then nothing else for that audience for six months,” Hopkins told Reuters.
Its expansion goals have been more than clear in Amazon’s recent aggressive .