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Amazon has reportedly joined the growing list of suitors angling to acquire TikTok as a new ban deadline approaches. According to The New York Times, the retailer has made a "last-minute bid" to buy the app, and has approached Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick about the offer.
It's not clear why Amazon is making an offer this late in the process. TikTok is currently facing an April 5 deadline to strike a deal, though President Donald Trump has said he would likely extend it if necessary. The Times reports that White House officials don't seem to be "seriously" considering the longshot bid. Amazon declined to comment.
Amazon joins several other companies and investors that have proposed bids. The group includes YouTuber MrBeast (with backing from a group that includes Roblox CEO David Baszucki), Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian (who joined a group of investors known as "Project Liberty") and Perplexity AI, which has proposed integrating the shortform video into its search engine.
Even with the deadline just days
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If you ever needed a definitive example of how money doesn't necessarily buy you success or taste, take a look at Amazon's studio arm. The mega-retailer's production division, now known as Amazon-MGM, has been making movies for more than a decade. Very few of the entries in its lineup have been world-beaters, but that hasn't deterred the outfit from persisting. The New York Times is today reporting that under its new head, Courtney Valenti, Amazon's movie division has plans to own the in-person cinema experience.
Amazon is apparently gearing up to release "up to 14 big, broad commercial films a year to theaters nationwide and around the world." Each film would spend 45 days in the theaters before heading to pay-per-view and then to Prime Video at some point after. The move comes in the face of shrinking box office receipts and fewer people heading to the cinema in general. Not to mention it's also planning to produce an equal number of films that'll go direct to Prime, which seems counter-intuitive given the desire to push people toward theaters.
That doesn't recognize the shift in viewing habits, especially among younger people, who'd much rather sit and watch YouTube for hours at a time. Or that the box office took a hit because of COVID-19 that it never really bounced back from. Or that a lot of people would rather wait for a film to become available "for free" on a service they already pay for.
It also doesn't ta
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