With NBC/Universal dropping out of the running in the bid to pick up “mini-major” MGM Pictures, it’s now back down to Sony and Warner Brothers to take control of the lion. The bidding battle has been raised due to MGM’s 4000 strong library (it already owns films from such independents as Orion and Polygram, as well as United Artists, the producers of the James Bond and Pink Panther franchises), with the WB behind the next-level HD-DVD format, while Sony is betting on its own Blu-Ray discs. Each of the two companies have much to gain by adding MGM to their companies, but ironically they also both have “heritage” reasons…

Sony would add MGM to its Columbia Pictures, resident on the very lot that MGM started out on and where the soundstages once housed The Wizard Of Oz and Gone With The Wind. WB on the other hand, would be able to compliment its New Line and Castle Rock lables with MGM, and join up the huge original MGM library (which includes those two classics) that they already own through their acquisition of Turner Entertainment in the 1990s. So, which will it be? Real estate home, or “spiritual”? An added incentive for WB to pick up the tab is that they would also get full distribution rights to The Hobbit, currently in rights negotiations with MGM. What in the world would LB think!?

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