By Dawn Chmielewski and Greg Bensinger

Aug 7 (Reuters) - When Mike Hopkins was approached about

leading Amazon ( AMZN ) Prime Video, his view of the streaming

service matched one held widely in Hollywood -- it was nothing

more than a perk for subscribers of the online retailer's

two-day delivery service.

But Amazon ( AMZN ) founder Jeff Bezos had much bigger ambitions for

the service that offers movies, television shows and original

programming.

"After meeting with Jeff, it was very clear that he really

saw this as an opportunity to build a media company," said

Hopkins, an entertainment industry veteran of Fox Networks, Sony

Pictures and Hulu who has in the last four years plotted Prime

Video's path to mainstream Hollywood player.

Under Hopkins, Prime Video is being recast in the mold of a

traditional media company, with its own film studio and

theatrical distribution arm, a growing slate of original movies

and series featuring A-list actors, an expanding roster of

professional sports and advertising.

"We ... like the progress of Prime Video," Amazon ( AMZN ) CEO

Andy Jassy told investors this month.

Prime Video's gathering star power-- and live sports --

position it to capture a greater share of the $28.75 billion in

digital advertising revenue Emarketer projects will be spent

this year on streaming, as marketers trim their investment in

traditional television. Morgan Stanley estimates Prime Video ads

could generate $3.3 billion in sales this year and more than

double to $7.1 billion within two years.

Even so, Prime Video continued to lag industry leaders

YouTube and Netflix by share of streaming television viewing in

the U.S. for the month of June, as measured by Nielsen. And,

while more of its shows have broken into Nielsen's Top 10

ranking of the most-streamed original series in 2023, Netflix

remains dominant.

SPORTS, STARS AND ADS

Still, Amazon's ( AMZN ) aspirations to create a single entertainment

destination that offers something for every taste are coming

into clearer focus, say nine agents, ad buyers and entertainment

industry executives.

Prime Video became the first streaming service to land an

exclusive deal with the NBA, creating year-round sports

programming that, by 2025, will include the NFL football, NASCAR

car racing, the WNBA Finals and Champions League soccer.

And in a threat to traditional studios, Amazon ( AMZN ) plans to more

than double the number of theatrical releases from six this year

to as many as 16 by 2027, Reuters can report for the first time.

That number does not include movies made for non-U.S.

audiences, the five or six it typically acquires from other

studios, and the dozen or so movies it plans to distribute

directly on Prime Video. That output would rival that of

Hollywood's most prolific studio, Universal Pictures.

Prime Video increased its outlay by $1.7 billion to $13.6

billion this year as it deepens its investment in professional

sports and increases the volume of content production, market

researcher Ampere Analysis estimates, while other studios

tighten spending on content.

Amazon's ( AMZN ) talent roster increasingly features Hollywood's

A-list, like Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal and Octavia

Spencer, alongside sports standouts such as tennis great Roger

Federer. It even struck a deal with Netflix's former film chief,

Scott Stuber, to revive the storied United Artists label at

Amazon MGM Studios.

Prime Video now understands "they need premium content and

celebrities in order to attract advertisers," said Jessica

Brown, managing director of digital investment for media buyer

GroupM. "Before, they had the reach and scale, but they didn't

have the content story."

"You need to be culturally relevant," she said.

Madison Avenue took notice when Prime Video this January

began showing ads to its roughly 115 million U.S. viewers,

instantly becoming the largest ad-supported subscription

streaming service, domestically, according to Emarketer.

Advertising executives said that reach and the purchasing

insights gleaned from Amazon's ( AMZN ) online retail store offer a

distinct opportunity. Notably, Amazon ( AMZN ) can offer to instantly

sell consumers goods they see during commercial breaks.

"That is reverberating through the marketplace right now,"

said Kevin Krim, CEO of marketing analytics firm EDO, adding

that the flood of new inventory may also be driving down

advertising prices for others.

ENTERTAIN EVERYONE

Amazon ( AMZN ) has at times struggled creatively. Despite hits like

"The Boys" - about vigilantes who seek to expose corrupt

superheroes, which hit No. 1 in more than 165 countries when the

fourth season debuted - it also produced expensive misses like

"Citadel," a thriller with tepid reviews that failed to make

Nielsen's streaming rankings in the U.S.

A creative team is courting more broadly-appealing fare with

global reach, said Hopkins. The ideal Prime Video project has

been described by talent agents as the equivalent of an airport

novel, a story that's page-turning and commercial. It's Amazon's ( AMZN )

answer to Netflix's programming philosophy of offering a

"gourmet cheeseburger," or well-executed entertainment that's

also widely popular.

"We want to be lots of people's No.1 show or film," said

Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios.

Amazon ( AMZN ) is focused on four different audience segments --

including men and women over age 35, and those under 35 -- that

it can serve with a reliable stream of content that's budgeted

in a way that reflects the size of the potential audience, said

Hopkins. Projects with broad appeal would have larger budgets

than those targeted at a narrow demographic, he said.

Agents say Amazon ( AMZN ) is on the hunt for young adult fare

like "The Summer I Turned Pretty," a teen romance,

action-thriller series in the vein of "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan,"

which appeal men over age 35, and female-skewing stories like

"The Idea of You," about a love affair between a single mother

and the lead singer of a boy band, which attracted nearly 50

million viewers worldwide in its first two weeks.

"We don't want to have a 'Saltburn' and then nothing else

for that audience for six months," Hopkins said in an interview,

referring to the popular Amazon MGM psychological thriller about

an Oxford student's entanglement with a classmate's eccentric

family.

Amazon ( AMZN ) continues to place calculated big bets. The $150

million it spent to adapt video game "Fallout" as a critically

acclaimed series became Prime Video's second most watched

series.

Instantly recognizable characters and stories are critical,

because Amazon ( AMZN ) tends to attract viewers seeking specific shows,

according to one agent who requested anonymity to preserve his

relationship with the company. "People aren't just trolling

around on Amazon ( AMZN ) like they do on Netflix," he said.

It's a far cry from Amazon's ( AMZN ) early foray into video

streaming, when it attempted to crowdsource content from

customers.

The transition accelerated with Amazon's ( AMZN ) $8.5 billion

acquisition of MGM, the studio behind the James Bond and

"Legally Blonde" franchises. That deal gave Amazon ( AMZN ) a trove of

intellectual property which it could mine, without engaging in

costly bidding wars for sought-after projects, said Hopkins.

He said Amazon ( AMZN ) wanted to avoid an "arms race."

"We decided it would be better for us, in the long run, to

own a studio that had really good IP, and then develop our own

things," said Hopkins.

Sports are another critical pillar of Hopkins's media

strategy.

The final element of Hopkins' plan is to recreate "Prime

without the shipping." Amazon ( AMZN ) has amassed a deep library of

content, spanning free, ad-supported TV-like channels, rival

streaming services like Paramount+, recently released movies to

rent or buy, all accessible via Prime Video's newly redesigned

app.

"What we're really trying to build is not just a single

subscription service -- I think we've proven that we can play a

much broader game," said Hopkins, adding that as CEO Jassy has

said, "We're on track to be a meaningfully profitable business

in our own right."