Former Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have signed up to present a new show on Amazon's streaming video service.
The trio will front three series of a new motoring programme for Amazon Prime, with the first season to be made available worldwide in 2016.

The move follows their departure from the hit BBC Two show earlier this year.
Clarkson's contract was not renewed following an "unprovoked physical attack" on a Top Gear producer.

His co-hosts then followed him in leaving the show.

They will now make the unnamed new programme with former Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman, who also quit the BBC following the "fracas".
Richard Hammond quote

In a statement from Amazon, Clarkson said: "I feel like I've climbed out of a biplane and into a spaceship."

Hammond said: "Amazon? Oh yes. I have already been there. I got bitten by a bullet ant." And May added: "We have become part of the new age of smart TV. Ironic, isn't it?"

Amazon Prime Video EU vice-president Jay Marine said: "Customers told us they wanted to see the team back on screen, and we are excited to make that happen.
"We can't wait to see what Jeremy, Richard, James and the team will create in what is sure to be one of the most globally anticipated shows of 2016."

The Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, has admitted it will be “very, very, very expensive” to launch a new motoring show with Jeremy Clarkson and his Top Gear co-stars after signing up the controversial trio in a multimillion-pound deal following their departure from the BBC.

The billionaire tech entrepreneur said viewers were enjoying a golden era of television and that the new Clarkson series would be a global success.

“We have a lot of things in the pipeline which I think viewers in the UK and around the world are going to love. And I think Clarkson’s new show is going to be one of those,” he told the Sunday Telegraph.

Bezos, who is worth an estimated $50bn , told the newspaper he was very excited about Clarkson’s move, but did not confirm if he had met him or his fellow presenters or how much they were being paid.


“They’re worth a lot, and they know it,” he said. The Financial Times has put the total cost to Amazon at $250m (£160m).

The company announced in July that it had signed up Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond for a new show to be broadcast via its on-demand TV service.

The team, along with Top Gear’s former executive producer Andy Wilman, have signed a three-series deal, with the first broadcast due at some point in 2016.

Bezos said it was one of a number of new shows commissioned for viewers of Prime, who pay £79 a year in the UK to access programmes and get next-day delivery on orders.

“I think we’re in a golden age of television, so if you go back in time even just five years, you couldn’t get A-list talent to do TV serials, or if you could, it was a rare thing,” Bezos said. “But that’s flipped completely.”

Top Gear was a global hit for the BBC, generating an estimated £50m a year, and Amazon will be hoping that its new show will replicate that success.

In the same interview, Bezos hinted that UK shoppers could be among the first to receive their Amazon deliveries by drone. One of the research centres working on the Prime Air project is in Cambridge, and he said the UK’s regulatory conditions were promising.


“In the scheme of things the UK regulatory agencies have been very advanced,” he said. “The FAA [the US aviation regulator] is catching up a little here in the US, but the UK has been, I’d say, a very encouraging example of good regulation. I think we like what we see there.”

He refused, however, to be drawn on when the first parcels may be dropped off to consumers, saying “months sounds way too aggressive to me”.

The Guardian revealed in March that the company was testing its new delivery service at a secret site in Canada, after failing to persuade US regulators to allow it to launch drones in its home state of Washington. It is also rumoured to be launching a grocery delivery service in the UK as soon as next month, and has leased a warehouse in Surrey previously used by Tesco.

A New York Times article published on Saturday described Amazon as having a “singular way of working”, saying that employees were “held to standards that the company boasts are ‘unreasonably high’.”

A former employee told the newspaper: “Nearly every person I worked with, I saw cry at their desk.”

Clarkson, Hammond & May Reportedly Registered "Gear Knobs" Name For Amazon Show

he former Top Gear hosts may have come up with a joyful, silly name for their new show on Amazon Prime.

Buzz Feed reported – after an investigation – that a law firm closely associated with Jeremy Clarkson has recently registered the trademark “Gear Knobs”. Usually, re-vamps and spin-offs are not that catchy from the get-go and require some time to get used to, but this particular title is brilliant - if the rumors turn out to be true, of course.

We don’t know if the new label mocks the BBC’s own show, but it’s a clever pun, providing a bright epithet to the three motoring Stooges. As any British person might tell you, the word “knob” can be used as a derogatory term in order to describe a silly, goofy (stupid) person.

As the new show slowly takes form, Clarkson, Hammond and May can leave the Top Gear fiasco behind them and offer a truly interesting spectacle. In fact, we have no reason to doubt that, especially with Amazon’s alleged $250 Million contract.

Amazon offers Prime membership for $67 for 1 day

Amazon cuts price of Prime membership to $67 for 1 day to celebrate Transparent Emmy wins

NEW YORK (AP) -- Amazon is cutting the price of its $99 annual Prime membership program to $67 on Friday for new members to celebrate its original series "Transparent" winning 5 Emmys at the 67th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards.

The deal will start on Friday, September 25 at 12:00 a.m. ET. and end at 11:59 p.m. PT., or 2:59 a.m. ET.

Amazon Inc. has been beefing up offers and services to attract subscribers to its Prime loyalty club. Most recently it gave members free online access to The Washington Post and has been expanding same-day delivery options.

The latest deal can be found at Amazon.com: Amazon Prime (One Year Membership) beginning Friday.

The result of this mega-deal is that every episode of the new show has a budget of around $7 million (£4.5 million) per episode, up from the $1.5 million (£977,000) the BBC invested.