by Siyi Tian

Sony Pictures Entertainment
10202 West Washington Blvd.
Culver City, California 90232
http://www.sonypictures.com

History

Sony Pictures Entertainment is owned by Sony Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Tokyo-based Sony Corporation. Its history can be traced back to 1918 when brothers Harry and Jack Cohn formed a partnership with their associate Joe Brandt, to produce low-budget short films and features. They called the company CBC Film Sales (Cohn-Brandt-Cohn- or as it was more commonly known in the trade press, “Corned Beef and Cabbage”). By 1920, the film industry was attracting audiences of 35 million a week willing to pay five cents a pop to be drawn into the magical world of filmed entertainment. Meanwhile, down the road in Hollywood, Columbia Pictures got its start, bringing pictures like It Happened One Night and Lawrence of Arabia to life. Columbia Pictures officially moved onto the studio lot in 1990 after its acquisition by Sony Corporation [1].

Finance

In 2015, according to the consolidated financial report, Sony Pictures Entertainment got over 68,466 million dollar in total revenue, which shows 5.8% increase compare to the previous year[18]. Its new feature movie Spectre has over 17million on the total gross.[22]. Sony pictures has 15 movies released so far and it is the fifth distributer that owns 9.2% in the ranking of market share in 2015[23].

Key Executives[2]:

For now, there are seven key executives in Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Steve-mosko, Chairman, Sony Pictures Television

Tom Rothman,
Chairman, Sony Motion Picture Group

David C. Hendler
Senior Executive VP & Chief Financial Officer

Robert Lawson
Executive VP & Chief Comm Officer

George Rose
Executive VP, People & Organization

Leah Weil
Senior Executive VP & General Counsel

The movies of SPE and Representative Movies

Movie reserved by SPE

As a company with long history of film shooting and transaction, Sony Pictures Entertainment now has a library of more than 4,000 films (including 12 Academy Award for Best Picture winners). Per statistics, each year Sony Pictures Entertainment distributes about 22 films on average under its various studio brands in 67 countries [16]. Quite a lot of them are very popular and still being produced by series currently. The movie and the derivative products like discs selling and rental could be the company’s major source of income.

Spiderman Series

Spiderman series movie is one of the hottest movies in the new century which shot by Sony Picture Entertainment. Its plot is based on the popular Marvel comic “The amazing Spider-man”, which describes a young man gains the super power after he was bitten by a mutant spider. He then uses the super power to fight against the evils to protect the city and people he loves[4]. The film series have already had 6 released movies from 2002 to 2014, which are distributed worldwide and realizes US$3.96 billion gross box office revenue [5].

James BondSeries

James Bond Series is another long lived, well famous and representative movie owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is inherited from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) by M&A transaction in the past[7]. The James Bond Series describe a legendary secret Britain special agent who fights against various evils in many countries since Cold War, whose unique selling points contains lots of stunts, high technology factors and beautiful women who are called ‘Bondgirl’[9]. Although it is well criticized by the feminism as discriminating the women, James Bond Series is still the hottest movie in the world.  There are 26 releases of James Bond Movies from 1963 to 2015, which accumulatively realizes US$4.70 billion of box office revenue so far [8].

The latest series James Bond movie: Spectre tells a story that a cryptic message from Bond’s past sends him on a trail to uncover a sinister organization. While M battles political forces to keep the secret service alive, Bond peels back the layers of deceit to reveal the terrible truth behind Spectre[21].

The interview

For those non-series movies, the Interview is the most controversy film in the list of Sony Picture Entertainment in recent years. The movie tells a story about two American reporters review the notorious Leader of North Korea Kim Jong-Un and finally kill him[10]. However, the movie annoys the real Kim Jong-Un and attracts the hacker infiltration to Sony Picture Entertainment’s computers and releases lots of secret files stored within. The North Korea government also threats to launch terrorism attack on the theater to deter anyone who goes to watch the movie [11]. The actions turn the entertainment event to escalate to a foreign affair and anti-terrorism event. Sony firstly decides to pull the movie.  But soon US President Obama announces that Sony ‘did the wrong thing’ when it pulled movie [12]. Finally, Sony reinitiates the movie but with limited offline box office yet mainly relying on the rental and online movie watching. As a result, the Interview realizes US$11.3 million in office box but US$40 million in the rental and online movie watching [13], but without much marketing expenditure. The movie has become a classic marketing case in history.

The incoming films produced by SPE

In the next few years, there are a lot of new movies under production and released for the market.

The Angry Birds Movie

The Angry Birds Movie is written by the famous cell phone game ‘Angry Birds’, which tells a story about the fight between birds and piggies. It is a audacious innovation to put the cellphone games to the screen. The movie is about to show at May 2016.The proposed casts include Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, etc[19] .

The Brothers Grimsby

This is a comedy movie which tells a story that Nobby (Sacha Baron Cohen), a sweet but dimwitted English football hooligan, reunites with his long-lost brother Sebastian (Mark Strong), a deadly MI6 agent, to prevent a massive global terror attack and prove that behind every great spy is an embarrassing sibling [20] .

Other non Movie operations

Except for the movie business, Sony pictures entertainment also has multiple businesses in television and gaming. The television division, Sony Pictures Television (SPT) has formed or invested in international networks with 148 channel feeds in 178 countries reaching approximately 1.2 billion cumulative households worldwide [14]. It also develops many games in cellphone applications which are based on the movies and television dramas to maximize the profit from derivative sales of the movies and dramas[15] . Furthermore, it has the studio in Culver City, West Washington which open for tourists [17].

 

SOURCES

[1] History of Sony Pictures. (2015).Sony pictures museum Online. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[2] Senior Management Team. (2015). Sony pictures official site. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[3] Spider man 2 Wall paper. (2015). Fanpop.com. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[4] The Amazing Spider-Man. (2015). Holly wood reporter. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[5] Spider-Man Franchises. (2015).Box office mojo. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[6] James Bond Spectre. (2015). The James Bond 007 Dossier. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[7] MGM PARTNERS WITH SONY PICTURES. (2011).

[8] James Bond Franchises. (2015).Box office mojo. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[9] Bond girls. (2015). James Bond MM . Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[10] The Interview. (2014). IMDB. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[11] Hackers told Sony to pull ‘The Interview’. (2014). USA. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[12] Obama: Sony ‘did the wrong thing’ when it pulled movie. (2014). USA today. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[13] ‘The Interview’ Makes $40 Million Online and On-Demand. (2014). Variety. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[14] SPE divisions.  (2015). Sony pictures official site. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[15] Games and apps.  (2015). Sony pictures official site. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[16]. Collections. (2015). Sony picture museum. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[17]. Sony Pictures Studio Tour. (2015). Sony Pictures Studio Tour website. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[18]Sony. Consolidated Financial Results. Retrieved 2 Dec 2015.

[19] The Angry Birds Movie. (2015). Sony pictures official site. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[20] The The Brothers Grimsby. (2015). Sony pictures official site. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[21] Spectre (2015) . IMDB. Retrieved 22 Nov 2015.

[22]Spectre (2015). Box office mojo. Retrieved 2 Dec 2015.

[23]Studio Market Share. Box office mojo. Retrieved 2Dec 2015.