Amazon’s New Movie Strategy Starts With Theaters
Amazon’s movie strategy is finally ready for its close-up.
After a decade-long dalliance with big-screen theatrical releases, the giant tech company will take center stage this week at the annual convention for theater owners, spending several millions of dollars to parade a stream of A-list stars including Ryan Gosling, Ben Affleck and Chris Hemsworth. It is the first time the company has ever taken on such a role.
The point: to prove that its movie arm, Amazon MGM Studios, is serious about releasing around 14 big, broad commercial films a year to theaters nationwide and around the world.
The appearance is the culmination of a strategic change for Amazon that began when it bought MGM, with the venerable studio’s impressive library, in 2022 for $8.5 billion. For years, the company has released five to eight films theatrically, but it was never clear how long they would stay in theaters before going to Prime Video, Amazon’s streaming service. “Air,” starring Mr. Affleck and Matt Damon, received a 37-day exclusive theatrical release. “Red One,” with Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans, hit Prime just weeks after it debuted in theaters.
Now with 14 movies a year, Amazon’s lineup will rival those from the big studios in both size and scope, and most will spend 45 days in theaters before hitting pay-per-view and then Prime.
Amazon is making the change in the middle of its own corporate shuffle. Jennifer Salke, who had overseen the film and television operations at Amazon Studios for seven years, abruptly left her job last week, surprising many people inside the company. So when the lights dim at the CinemaCon conference on Wednesday, all eyes will be on Courtenay Valenti, Amazon MGM’s head of film, who will lay out the vision for the company’s theatrical future.
“We have been talking about the theatrical slate and the commitment this company has to theatrical for about two years now,” Ms. Valenti, 61, said in an interview. “Finally, we get to show, not tell.”
Will Ms. Salke’s departure upend any of that?
“It won’t,” Ms. Valenti said.
Amazon is pushing into theaters even as the movie business appears to be shrinking and audiences are more fickle than ever. Box office sales are down 11 percent from a year ago and remain far below prepandemic levels. It is one of the few out-of-home entertainment businesses that have yet to recover from Covid.
Some theater owners say they hope Amazon will help fix one of the major problems plaguing their business — a scarcity of wide-release movies.
“Attendance is still down 35 percent, and that’s not because moviegoers are somehow afraid to go to theaters,” said Adam Aron, chairman and chief executive of AMC Entertainment. “The wide-release movie count is down 30 percent. So it’s extremely good news for us that a major deep-pocketed company like Amazon is about to increase the number of movies.”
Ms. Valenti joined Amazon in 2023, a year after it closed its purchase of MGM Studios. A 30-year veteran of Warner Bros., she was hired to put together a slate that could rival any legacy studio’s.
Her first order of business was to assure Hollywood that she was committed to making broad-audience films like the ones she shepherded at Warner Bros: “Barbie,” “Fury Road,” “Elvis” and “Happy Feet.” Second: Amazon would release these films at a regular cadence that both filmmakers and theater chains could rely on.
In addition to the 14 to 16 films that Amazon now expects to release in theaters each year, another dozen will be produced directly for Prime Video. The company is also forming its own international distribution arm.
“Amazon is not doing this for us because they want us to feel good. They’re doing it because it because it should be good for their business,” said Greg Marcus, chief executive of the company that operates Marcus Theaters, the fourth-largest chain in the country. “Amazon is saying, ‘If we’re going to be in the streaming business, then we need to be in the theatrical business, too, if we want to maximize the impact of these movies.’”
Still, there are no guarantees in the film business. Amazon owns the James Bond franchise, but any film in that 62-year-old series is years away. The company just took over creative control of the brand from its caretakers, Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, after a yearslong dispute. Amazon quickly put new producers in place — David Heyman (“Harry Potter”) and Amy Pascal (“Spider-Man”) — and it hopes to begin moving on an actor to play Bond in a new film as soon as possible, but it will take time.
The company is also rebooting well-known MGM titles like “The Thomas Crown Affair,” with Michael B. Jordan directing and starring; adapting best-selling novels (Andy Weir’s “Project Hail Mary” and Colleen Hoover’s “Verity”); and taking on a beloved Mattel property (“Masters of the Universe”).
But much of what Amazon has planned are original stories. There’s a crime drama with Mr. Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo in the vein of “Heat”; a thriller, “After the Hunt,” starring Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield; and a sci-fi film, “Mercy,” starring Chris Pratt.
“They love movies, and they are taking chances on original I.P.,” said Jeb Brody, president of Imagine Features, which has six films in development with the company. “They want all kinds of projects for all different audiences, but they are being discerning.”
The new push is intense for Ms. Valenti, who has succeeded for many years in Hollywood in part because she doesn’t seek out the spotlight — and often tries to avoid it. She said she was proud of the movies she was presenting at the theater convention this week but also constantly made sure to use “we” instead of “I” to refer to the work being produced.
“None of this happens by one person,” she said.
A daughter of Jack Valenti, the longtime face of the movie industry as president of what is now the Motion Picture Association, Ms. Valenti had a brief career in finance before getting her start as an executive at Warner Bros.
“I feel like I’m a 61-year-old nepo baby,” she said with a laugh.
But many in Hollywood seem to see her as something else: a sign that Amazon is finally getting serious about the movie business.
“She wants to hear what you have to say, and you want to hear what she has to say,” said Charles Roven, a producer who has worked with Ms. Valenti for decades and now has four projects at Amazon.
