Prime Video made major strides in 2022. They came out swinging in content-wise with being the exclusive home of NFL Thursday Night Football; which had Its first game pulling viewership numbers of over 15.3 million. It also hosts the biggest viewership TV show with The Lord of Rings spin-off The Lord of Rings: Rings of Power, which had an estimated 100 million viewers worldwide. An astonishing achievement after such a big splash to produce the show.
Content is the major push for Prime Video. To put themselves in a good spot in the streaming wars, major IP rights and acquisitions have been made to secure the future of the platform. A big part of that is the MGM acquisition which gets them the catalog and backbone of a major studio. They might have missed out on this year’s blockbuster comedy show, Wednesday, a spin-off of The Addams Family that had its rights over to Netflix an IP owned by MGM. There is also the push towards live sports, NFL Black Friday. A football event is the first of its kind and exclusive to Prime.
Movies have also been a prime focus of Prime Video. According to Bloomberg, Amazon is looking to invest in movies. The company is willing to gamble more than 1 billion a year for Amazon Originals movies. They look to produce 12 to 15 movies which will have a full theatrical run before debuting on the streamer. This is looked at as a good investment with the amount of box office returns studios like Marvel, Paramount and Fox have been making with their franchises. This is a noticeable gamble for the streamer as this comes as the first try at this approach.
The streamer has various major IPs lined up to be produced into TV shows. Among these is a limited “Blade Runner 2099” series. Following the footsteps of the hugely successful HBO Original video game adaptation of The Last of Us, Amazon is looking to produce shows from gaming IPs like “God of War” and “Warhammer 40k” with the latter set to star and executive produced by the Man of Steel star, Henry Cavill.
With the newly formed DC Studios, Amazon is in the process of inking a deal that will have the studio produce DC Animated content for the streamer. This is major with Amazon working a similar deal with Sony to live-action Spiderman-related TV shows for Prime. IP sharing with both DC and Sony is a major boost to Prime’s library.
