In the summer of 1981, MGM coveted Rocky and James Bond. The studio, formed in 1924, had an eye for expansion. And it liked what it saw in the intellectual property of United Artists. UA, a Hollywood icon itself, was behind films like Some Like It Hot, Raging Bull, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and, yes, the Rocky movies and the Bond franchise. So MGM acquired UA, and its films, for some $380 million ($1.2 billion adjusted for inflation), with Frank Rosenfelt, MGM’s chairman, telling The Washington Post at the time that UA’s library would be critical as Hollywood transitioned “from the movie business to the entertainment software business.”
Forty years later, those same titles are still being coveted to entertain through new technology. Except this time, the buyer…