As Amazon MGM jockeys to work itself back into the upper echelons of entertainment, it’s extending its relationship with Alan Ritchson, as our Blake & Wang P.A. entertainment lawyer insider, Brandon Blake, lays out for us. 

Brandon Blake

Riding the Reacher Wave

Alan Ritchson is, of course, not just the main star of Prime Video’s Reacher but also its executive producer. Reacher has been one of Prime Video’s most successful series so far, estimated to be driving around $279M in subscriber revenue and associated markers.

Currently, it’s renewed through to Season 5, and its Season 3 set a record for Amazon, at 54.6M global viewers. It is also routinely hitting Nielsen’s top ten streaming charts, often in the top 3. To date, it’s accounting for around 6.6B viewing minutes, with 56% of the audience being international. The show is particularly popular in Germany and the UK, alongside Brazil, and has been doing incredibly well on Rotten Tomatoes, at 96% critical approval.

Blake & Wang Lawyers

New First-Look Deal

With this in mind, it’s little wonder that they’ve now gone all-in on a 3-year first-look TV deal, under the production banner Dancing Skeleton. So, expect to see a whole lot more new TV shows developed especially for Amazon.

The fourth season of Reacher is currently under development for the platform, and there’s also a spinoff series, Neagley ordered and in the works. This will be headed by Maria Sten, playing Frances Neagley. It’s expected that there will be guest-starring appearances from the main series cast as well, including Alan Ritchson himself. 

The production company will also be bringing the comedy, The Man With The Bag, targeting family audiences, to life alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger. Untitled Mike Thornton Project has also recently wrapped for the streamer as well. 

Future projects in the works will be an interesting take on the action noir genre, Motor City, which is set to hit theatrical screens in late July, and Runner, which is anticipated to reach the silver screen in early September. 

Across its recent deals, Amazon has been leaning heavily on high-profile entertainment talent partnerships like this. As well as the deal with Ritchson, they have also recently entered another first-look deal with Jake Gyllenhaal’s production company, Nine Stories, after the reboot of Road House did well for them. 

Intriguingly, they’ve also greenlit three GenAI original series via their GenAI Creators Fund. During their recent Upfronts presentation, their major focus was on a new slew of interactive and shoppable ads, alongside dynamic TV creative. However, a vastly expanded slate of TV series developed for Amazon MGM also got plenty of promotional time. 

We’ll also see Prime Day take place later this month, where they typically put up early discounts and deals to attract new subscribers to the Prime “ecosystem”. While the focus remains on Amazon shopping for very obvious reasons, this also typically includes some subscriber deals or other incentives for Prime Video as well.

While Amazon has been a background figure among streaming platforms, it seems they’re now ready to jockey for a higher position among their competitors. It will be interesting to see how this strategy shift plays out for them.