Amazon will invest $1 billion annually in film production for the box office

Amazon, the world's largest online retailer, plans to make 12-15 movies every year that will be released in theaters.

Here's What We Know

Streaming services rarely share their feature-length films with theaters. And if they do, the pictures don't stay on the big screens for long. The second installment of Knives Out, for example, premiered this week. The Netflix film will only be in theaters for a week, after which it will be available on streaming.

Amazon is more "friendly" to cinemas, but has so far made do with limited investment in film production. The Internet commerce giant releases a couple of dozen films (Netflix releases over a hundred). And some of them are available only in English. However, in the near future, this is all set to change. Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources, reports that Amazon intends to invest $1 billion a year in the production of movies that can be seen in theaters.

The news of this raised the value of the securities of a number of movie theaters. For example, shares of AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., a major movie theater chain, rose 9.2 percent (to $7.99). Cinemark Holdings Inc. shares rose 12 percent to $13.78.

Amazon is increasing investment in the production of original movies after buying the studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for $8.5 billion. The company has attracted the attention of the movie business after it began to massively buy up paintings at the Sundance Film Festival, sending them to the rental of thousands of theaters. Amazon has already received Oscar nominations for The Big Sick and Manchester by the Sea.

Source: Bloomberg