In an end to a long-wrangling bidding war between Time Warner Entertainment and Sony (Columbia) Pictures Entertainment, trade paper Variety is today announcing the sale of Metro Goldwyn Mayer to Sony. Variety reports that “A group led by Sony Corporation agreed in principle to terms with Metro Goldwyn Mayer to acquire the studio, hours after presumed frontrunner Time Warner ankled the bidding. Time Warner pulled out of the auction early Monday, saying the bidding for The Lion, which owns the James Bond, Rocky and The Pink Panther film franchises, had gotten too high. The deal gives Sony the biggest library in Hollywood with more than 8,000 pics. MGM sold for $2.94 billion, plus $2bn debt assumption”.

What this means for film – and animation – fans is that MGM is “going home”. When the company was facing financial difficulties in the 1970s, the original owners of MGM sold off the lot and soundstages to Columbia Pictures, who were then bought out by…Sony! So now MGM will join Columbia back on the original MGM lot, something that would make perfect sense, if it were not for the fact that Warners owns all of the pre-1980s MGM features, through their acquisition of Ted Turner’s company (who had bought the MGM film library) in the 1990s. A deal with WB would have seen the entire library back together again, as well as the MGM-owned United Artists titles. For Sony, this represents a real coup, as it gives them considerable leverage in the upcoming high-definition DVD format war, as well as their long-term hopes of producing the James Bond series. For Warners, their loss is more severe: not only do they not get the library to match up, but now the deal has added another partner to the table in complicated negotiations to bring Peter Jackson’s take on The Hobbit to the screen. Hollywood just got a lot more interesting, folks!