The first Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animated cartoon, The Discontented Canary, is released to movie theatres.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures or MGM) is an American media company, founded in 1924, that produces and distributes feature films and television programs. It is based in Beverly Hills, California.MGM was formed by Marcus Loew by combining Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures, and Louis B. Mayer Pictures into a single company. It hired a number of well known actors as contract players—its slogan was "more stars than there are in heaven"—and soon became one of Hollywood's "big five" film studios, producing popular movie musicals and winning many Oscars. The company also owned film studios, movie lots, movie theaters and technical production facilities. Its most prosperous era, from 1926 to 1959, was bracketed by two productions of Ben Hur. After that, it divested itself of the Loews movie theater chain, and, in the 1960s, it diversified into television production. In 1969, Kirk Kerkorian bought 40% of MGM, hired new management, reduced its output to about five movies per year, and diversified its products, creating MGM Resorts International and, in 1973, a Las Vegas-based hotel and casino company (which it divested in the 1980s). In 1980, it acquired United Artists. In 1986, Kerkorian sold the entire company to Ted Turner. Turner kept the rights to the MGM library in Turner Entertainment, sold the studio lot in Culver City to Lorimar, and sold back the remnant of MGM to Kerkorian who then sold it again in 1992, only to buy it again a third time in 1996. After that he expanded MGM by purchasing Orion Pictures and the Samuel Goldwyn Company, including both of their film libraries. Finally, in 2004, Kerkorian sold the company to a consortium that included Sony Pictures.
In 2010, MGM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and reorganization. Later that year, after reorganization, MGM emerged from bankruptcy under the ownership of its creditors. Two former executives at Spyglass Entertainment, Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum, became co-chairmen and co-CEOs of MGM's new holding company. In 2020, with Barber having left MGM, it began looking to be acquired by another company in order to pay its creditors.On May 26, 2021, it was announced that MGM would be acquired by Amazon for $8.45 billion. The merger was finalized on March 17, 2022.In the present day, MGM is still producing and distributing feature films and television series. Its major film productions include the Rocky and James Bond franchises, and among its recent television productions is the series The Handmaid's Tale.