3. Amazon Prime Resort

It’s hard to believe that once upon a time, Amazon was a pioneering digital retailer with the groundbreaking idea of selling books online and shipping them to customers. Now, the company’s market cap tops $1 trillion (with plenty of accusations of anti-competitive and monopolistic behavior, abysmal labor practices, and tax avoidance). Meanwhile, the company’s founder – Jeff Bezos – holds an estimated $112 billion in net worth… nearly the worth of the entire Walt Disney Company in one man. Unlike Disney or Universal who have built warm-and-fuzzy 

Amazon got into the streaming wars with Amazon Prime Video – a service included with the company’s Prime annual membership (which also includes free same-to-two-day shipping, free photo storage, and more). Since reportedly over 200 million people have Amazon Prime (and thus get access to Prime Video), it's technically the second-largest streaming service after Netflix. 

Amazon began producing Original content for its streaming service in 2013, and has had a few breakthrough hits all its own. But in the age of the IP Wars, Amazon needed an influx of content to populate its services. Just as Disney gobbled up fellow “Big Six” studio 20th Century Fox, Amazon made a similar move.

In 2021, the company announced the jaw-dropping news that it intended to purchase legendary, century-old film studio MGM for $8.5 billion (the price Disney paid for Marvel and Star Wars combined). Despite the grand price tag, Amazon’s acquisition comes with some strings. Among film aficianados, MGM is synonymous with the golden age of Hollywood and classic big screen pictures (which is precisely why Disney licensed the name to lend a little cinematic gravitas to their Disney-MGM Studios theme park). But due to legal stipulations, any films produced by MGM prior to 1986 (including age-old classics like The Wizard of Oz and Singin’ in the Rain plus newer hits like Fame and A Christmas Story) actually don’t belong to Amazon. Instead, they revert to Ted Turner and the WarnerMedia catalogue.

So in addition to its own originals and licensed fare, Amazon will become the owner of post-1986 MGM film franchises like Legally Blonde and Rocky as well as TV series like The Voice, The Real Housewives, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Obviously, none of those quite feel like billion-dollar pop-culture-shapers. But bar none, the most obvious headliner of the MGM purchase for Amazon is clear…

IN THE PARK: The big win for Amazon is the acquisition of James Bond. But even that is complicated, since the 25 main films in the series (with six different actors depicting the character) are co-owned by Eon Productions, whose involvement will need to be a part of anything Amazon hopes to do with the character – and who have expressed disinterest in any direct-to-streaming films. (So far, Amazon has only announced the “007 Race to a Million” reality show based on the character.) 

If James Bond was the driving force behind the Amazon purchase as rumored, will it have been worth it? We’ll see… But there’s no doubt that the world of James Bond would make a great land in Amazon Prime Resort…

Released in 2021, The Tomorrow War made headlines as the biggest budget film ever to go direct-to-streaming (with a $200 million price tag).

Originally conceived as a Paramount theatrical release, the film stars Chris Pratt as a soldier who’s recruited by humans from the future to travel to the 2050s and stage a last stand against a species of aliens who have overrun the planet. We’re not sure if the dystopian Miami overrun with alien devastation would make for a particularly pretty theme park land, but it sure would be a captivating one.

Another world you might like to visit – but not necessarily live in – is that of The Boys, an Amazon Original series based on the comic book of the same name. The Boys imagines a world where super-powered individuals (many of whom have clear analogs in the DC and Marvel universes) are bought and paid for by an Amazon-like super-corporation called Vought. 

The illustrious group of “The Seven” is Vought’s personal “Justice League,” with its infighting heroes ranging from entitled jerks to genocidal sociopaths whose drug addictions, sex addictions, and even homocides are concealed behind Vought’s marketing machine. While The Boys may be grisly, gruesome, and TV-MA, it would actually be an interesting world to bring to life in a theme park… And certainly, going along for a ride with The Boys as they seek to take down the Seven and Vought’s inner workings would be an interesting thing to be a part of…

The highest profile project to yet emerge from Amazon Prime is the upcoming series Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power. Set to debut this September, the prequel series takes place thousands of years before either The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings and explore the Second Age of Middle Earth. Amazon committed to five seasons with an estimated cost of $1 billion, making it the most expensive television series ever made. 

The Lord of the Rings story is owned by the Tolkien Estate and Trust, while the fabled Peter Jackson film series (2001 to 2003) was distributed by New Line. Both organizations are involved in the Amazon series, but Rings of Power is its own thing entirely with its own visual language and interpretation of famous locales. Still, there’s no question that an Amazon Prime Resort would position a Rings of Power land as its anchor… assuming the Tolkien Estate would agree.