Amazon’s Prime Video Shifts to Profits, Promoting Rival Streamers
To meet a corporate profit mandate, Amazon’s Prime Video is taking a more cautious approach to original TV and movie projects, leaning into advertising and live sports and doubling down on its promotion of rival streaming services.
In the summer of 2022, a year after becoming CEO of Amazon, Andy Jassy wanted the executives running the company’s Prime Video business to tell him why it was spending billions of dollars a year on expensive shows such as “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” and “Citadel.”
At an annual planning meeting, Jassy showed particular annoyance about the costs of “Citadel,” a spy-action series whose budget had ballooned to $250 million for just its first season, said a person who attended this meeting. Jassy told the team he wanted them to come up with a new plan for Prime Video by March 2023 that would show a path to turning a profit from the unit, he told the executives.
Now, eight producers who are working with Amazon or have done so in the past two years say the company is buying fewer film and TV projects than they have in the past.