Chris Hemsworth And Mark Ruffalo Get Blockbuster Backing From Amazon

Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo are starring in a high profile new Amazon production (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images for Disney)

Getty Images for Disney

Amazon MGM Studios has today revealed its latest blockbuster investment which it hopes will help it to take on Hollywood’s heavyweights.

Money is no object in the tech giant’s quest to take on traditional movie studios. In 2017 it paid an estimated $250 million to buy the television rights to The Lord of the Rings and then spent more than $800 million on producing two seasons of The Rings of Power show based on it.

The spending spree didn’t stop there and in March 2022 Amazon paid $8.5 billion for storied movie studio MGM giving it access to its most famous franchise – James Bond.

However, Amazon couldn’t freely develop the spy series as longtime stewards Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson were in charge so it had to whip out its wallet again and handed them an estimated $1 billion to cede creative control. Sparing no expense, Dune director Denis Villeneuve was hired to helm the next instalment in the franchise but Amazon isn’t putting all its eggs in that basket.

As this report explained, Bond will be joined by a big budget reboot of the Thomas Crown Affair led by Michael B. Jordan whilst Ryan Gosling will next year star in new sci-fi epic Project Hail Mary which has already cost Amazon $168.6 million. That’s not all.

In 2023 Amazon won a bidding war for the movie rights to American author Don Winslow’s novella Crime 101. The story has shades of 1995 Robert De Niro action drama Heat as it sees as series of high-level jewel heists taking place along the Pacific Coast. Police link them to Colombian cartels but detective Lou Lubesnick knows better and zeroes in on a thief looking for a final score. Like that perp, Amazon could smell money in the story and has yet again opened up its bulging wallet to capitalize on it.

Bart Layton, who co-wrote the screenplay, is directing the movie for Amazon alongside three other production companies – Raw, Working Title Films and The Story Factory. They have amassed a cast which reads like a roll call for the Oscars. Chris Hemsworth is in the role of the thief alongside Mark Ruffalo playing the determined detective. They are joined by Oscar-winner Halle Berry, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Monica Barbaro, Barry Keoghan and Nick Nolte. They don’t come cheap.

Principal photography began in October 2024, in Los Angeles but the movie’s production company is actually based in the United Kingdom and there is good reason for this.

Studios filming in the United Kingdom get a reimbursement of up to 25.5% of the money they spend in the country provided that at least 10% of their core costs are incurred there. In order to demonstrate this to the authorities, studios set up separate companies to produce each film in the U.K. and they are obliged to file legally-binding earnings releases.

The Amazon subsidiary behind Crime 101 is called Mad Leo UK Productions in a nod to MGM’s roaring lion logo. The company filed its latest earnings release today which revealed that by December 31, 2024, $67.2 million (£53.5 million) had been spent on the picture. That is set to surge in its next filings as filming continued until early March this year with post production currently underway ahead of its release in February 2026.

The filings also reveal that the production company banked a $1.3 million (£1 million) reimbursement bringing the net spending on the picture down to $65.9 million. It shows that in the quest for Hollywood’s crown, every cent counts. Even for Amazon.