Thaindian News

Los Angeles, Mar 24 (THAINDIAN NEWS) The owner of the James Bond film franchise – MGM is up for grabs, and Time Warner has bid $1.5 billion for it. The debt-ridden MGM has gotten 3 bids, and Time Warner tops the list. MGM was expecting bids of over $2 billion, but so far the suitors for the debt-ridden company have placed bids in the range of $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion only. Earlier many companies like the News Corp, Liberty Media and AT&T also seemed interested in the deal, but later they backed off, and now only 3 suitors led by Time Warner remain in the fray. The other bidders in the fray are Lions Gate Entertainment and Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries.

The owners of the James Bond film franchise - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (popularly known as MGM) have a debt of over $3.7 billion from a 2005 buy-out. They have also not ruled out the possibility of operating as an independent company. Officials at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer said in a statement on Monday that they had “received a number of bids” which they would think over and debate over the next “several weeks.” MGM is struggling with such a huge debt as they also suffered huge losses, after there was an industry-wide drastic decrease in the DVD sales.