Transamerica Corporation agrees to sell United Artists to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for $380 million after the box office failure of the 1980 film Heaven's Gate.

Transamerica Corporation is an American holding company for various life insurance companies and investment firms operating primarily in the United States, offering life and supplemental health insurance, investments, and retirement services. The company is located in Baltimore, Maryland, with its subsidiary Transamerica Life Company headquartered in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; It has back offices Denver, Colorado; Harrison, New York; Toronto, Ontario; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Knoxville, Tennessee. Additional affiliated offices are located throughout the United States. In 1999, it became an independent subsidiary of multinational company Aegon.

United Artists (UA) is an American film production and distribution company owned by Amazon MGM Studios. In its original operating period, it was founded in February 1919 by Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks as a venture premised on allowing actors to control their own financial and artistic interests rather than being dependent upon commercial studios.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. is an American film and television production and distribution company headquartered in Culver City, California. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was founded on April 17, 1924, and has been owned by the Amazon MGM Studios subsidiary of Amazon since 2022.

Heaven's Gate is a 1980 American epic Western film written and directed by Michael Cimino, starring Kris Kristofferson, Christopher Walken, John Hurt, Sam Waterston, Brad Dourif, Isabelle Huppert, Jeff Bridges, and Joseph Cotten, and loosely based on the Johnson County War. It revolves around a dispute between land barons and European immigrants of modest means in Wyoming in the 1890s.