Amazon Joins Hollywood’s Top Lobbying Group

The Motion Picture Association has been wooing the company for years. The addition gives the group a lot more muscle.

Hollywood’s top lobbying group, the Motion Picture Association, has a powerful new member: Amazon.

The tech giant’s decision to join the M.P.A. after a long courtship reflects its ambition in the streaming and film businesses — as well as the association’s need to add muscle. “Welcoming Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios into our ranks will broaden our collective policymaking and content protection efforts,” Charles H. Rivkin, the association’s chief executive, said in an interview.

The association’s other members are Disney, Netflix, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. The M.P.A. has not added a member since 2019, when Netflix joined. Mr. Rivkin, a former United States ambassador and assistant secretary of state, has since focused recruitment efforts on Amazon.

Amazon gained a foothold in the entertainment industry in the 2010s with unconventional series like “Transparent” and indie films like “Manchester by the Sea.” The company has since grown its Prime Video streaming service into a colossus. Last year, Amazon spent $19 billion to make or acquire content (films, TV shows, music), up 14 percent from a year earlier.

In 2021, Amazon acquired Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer for $8.5 billion. MGM was a founding member of the M.P.A. in 1923. But the studio dropped its membership in 2005 amid an ill-fated merger with Sony. In Mr. Rivkin’s membership discussions with Amazon, its purchase of MGM “changed the conversation,” he said. In the years ahead, Amazon plans to roughly double MGM’s theatrical slate to as many as 16 films annually.

Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, said in a statement that the company was “proud” to join the M.P.A. and its effort “to protect creators, content and consumers worldwide.” Amazon has successfully worked with the association on piracy efforts over the last few years.

For decades, the M.P.A. reigned as one of the most powerful trade associations in Washington. Its influence waned in the 2000s with the arrival of lobbyists for Big Tech. The M.P.A. also suffered from budget cuts and glacial decision making, in part because of consolidation in the entertainment industry; member studios had become embedded inside media conglomerates with divergent interests.

The low point came in 2012, when the M.P.A. failed to push through the Stop Online Piracy Act, which was mostly aimed at piracy sites overseas. Google and other tech companies, including Amazon, mobilized to defeat the legislation, arguing that it would effectively allow the government to censor the internet.

Mr. Rivkin was hired in 2017 to reinvigorate the M.P.A. The association’s priorities include strengthening copyright protections. It also lobbies to open markets and secure tax incentives to produce films. Mr. Rivkin has expanded the group’s advocacy to include streaming.

The association also oversees the movie-ratings system in the United States and operates a separate unit to fight piracy. Last month, the M.P.A. helped shut down Fmovies, a Vietnam video site that trafficked in stolen Hollywood content, attracting 6.7 billion visits from January 2023 to June 2024.

With the addition of Amazon, the only significant Hollywood player that remains a nonmember is Apple.

“It used to be seen as a Northern versus Southern California battle,” Mr. Rivkin said, referring to Hollywood and Silicon Valley. “That is so outdated. The lines have blurred.”

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