MovieChat Forums > Classic Film > What would you think MGM would've been l...

What would you think MGM would've been like if Kirk Kerkorian never bought it?


https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/gdbrvz/what_would_you_think_mgm_wouldve_been_like_if/

The decline and dismemberment of MGM is a tragic yet interesting piece of movie history that for some reason fascinates me when researching old cinema.

In the last 50 years MGM has been a hallow shell of its former self that kept getting worse as time went by. This once mega studio producing classics like Wizard of Oz, Ben-Hur, 2001, etc became what is now just a glorified holding company for defunct movie studio libraries like Orion and United Artists.

People like to blame Kirk Kerkorian who bought MGM in the late 60's for downsizing a once powerful studio. They blame him for stuff like Buying the studio just to use the MGM name and lion logo for a casino and hotel chain and Hiring James T. Aubrey who sold off MGM's memorabilia to slashing its production costs by making 3-5 movies a year

And the big blow to it all is when Ted Turner try to buy MGM in 1986. He eventually did but he ended becoming too high in debt to own a movie studio he was forced to sell the MGM name back to Kerkorian, But decided to keep the pre-1986 library of films for his TBS and TNT channels. And since then MGM kept getting resold and downgraded even further throughout the years.

If MGM never suffered from all this trouble, Do you think it would still be the big studio it once was?

reply