Sony Pictures Entertainment Full-Year Profits Fall Nearly 10% To $808M

After a nine-year revival, Sony’s TriStar Television label is being phased out again. Its two top executives, EVP Jennifer Turner, who ran the unit for the past two and a half years, and SVP Nicole Norwood, will be departing the studio. TriStar Television has no current series on the air. Its development slate will be taken over by Sony Pictures Television’s drama development team.

Sony Pictures Animation is currently making Goat, an original animated sports comedy from producers Stephen Curry and Erick Peyton of Unanimous Media, Oscar nominee Michelle Raimo Kouyate (The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story, Silver Linings Playbook), and Adam Rosenberg (Creed 3) and Academy Award winner Rodney Rothman (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) of Modern Magic.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Sony Pictures Entertainment’s senior management says it remains “optimistic” about the future of cinema, despite a slow start to the North American summer season and industry talk of superhero fatigue. Speaking on a Sony Group Corporation conference call (on Thursday in Japan, Wednesday in Los Angeles), Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Tony Vinciquerra blamed current box office torpor on three prongs of disruption that have affected movie production over the past five years: competition with streaming; the disruptions and cost increases brought on by the COVID-era; and last year’s writers and actors strikes. Together these have led to fewer films reaching theaters.

For more than week, it’s been crickets when it comes to the push and pull between Skydance and Sony Pictures Entertainment/Apollo over Paramount Global.

Rebecca Rubin Senior Film and Media Reporter “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” is stalling at the international box office with $33.3 million from 75 territories. The fifth entry in director George Miller’s post-apocalyptic series has generated $58.9 million globally in its first weekend of release, a rough start given its $168 million production budget. Domestically, the Warner Bros.

NP Singh, the long-serving leader of Sony’s networks business in India, is stepping down from the C-suite.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Veteran unscripted producer Jeff Collins (“Dance Moms”) has sealed an overall deal with Sony Pictures Television – Nonfiction. Under the pact, Collins and his newly launched Resilient Content shingle will focus on creating unscripted programming and developing formats for broadcast, cable and streaming.

YG Entertainment has announced plans for BABYMONSTER and TREASURE to release new music in the coming months.Today (May 20), YG Entertainment released a video featuring founder Yang Hyun-suk announcing and detailing upcoming plans for BABYMONSTER and TREASURE to release new music in the coming months.Yang first announced that a performance video for BABYMONSTER’s ‘BABYMONS7ER’ album cut ‘Like That’, which was produced and gifted to the group by Charlie Puth, will be released sometime by the end of the month.He also shared that the seven-piece will then be gearing up to release their first full-length album sometime in October. While Yang himself only verbally mentioned October as a release window, the English subtitles noted that the release would be in “either September or October”.In the lead-up to BABYMONSTER’s upcoming album, Yang shared that the girl group will be dropping a song from the album as a pre-release single sometime in July.

Sony Music, the largest music publisher in the world and the home of artists like Beyonce and Adele, has contacted more than 700 firms, including Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI, to determine if they have used its songs to develop artificial intelligence systems.

Grand Theft Auto VI, the latest installment in the mega-selling video game franchise, will be released in fall 2025, parent company Take-Two Interactive has confirmed.

SonyLIV is getting the gang back together for another Scam.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Sony Music Publishing today announced it has acquired the catalog of Tame Impala singer/ songwriter/ producer Kevin Parker, who has also worked extensively with Dua Lipa, Rihanna, SZA, Kendrick Lamar Gorillaz and more. The deal, which expands the company’s 15-year partnership with Parker, encompasses his entire catalog of songs as well as future works. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Sony Group Corporation saw its sales climb by 19% to JPY13.0 trillion in its financial year to March 2024, boosted by a sharp depreciation of the Japanese currency. Net profits for the group were down 3% to JPY971 billion. It was a similar scenario at Sony’s ‘pictures division,’ which comprises theatrical film, TV networks and television content production.

28 Years Later finally has a release date, and it’s not a long wait.Per a report from Variety, Sony Pictures has seemingly confirmed that the Danny Boyle-led sequel to 28 Days Later is due to arrive on June 20, 2025. The film will star Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes and Jack O’Connell – the latter’s casting in the film was reported on by Deadline Hollywood last week.28 Years Later, first announced earlier this year, will be directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, both of whom led the original 2002 film.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Sony Pictures Entertainment has completed state-of-the-art upgrades to its mix stages. Among the soundstages that underwent substantial improvements are the Cary Grant, William Holden, Kim Novak, Burt Lancaster, Anthony Quinn and Jimmy Stewart theaters, as well as Dub Stage 17.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor TKO, the parent company of UFC and WWE, is on the upswing, delivering solid Q1 results and enough momentum for both franchises that the company opted to boost its full-year revenue and earnings guidance for Wall Street. TKO disclosed that it has reached a $25 million deal with NBCUniversal to allow WWE’s “Monday Night Raw” wrestling franchise to remain on USA Network through the end of this year. In January, TKO struck a massive 10-year deal with Netflix to bring “Raw” and other WWE content to the streamer’s platform as of next year.

MadRiver Pictures has closed a multi-year equity financing and distribution deal with several major international distribution partners which gives it the ability to fully finance films at a budget of $25M-$75M for the global theatrical marketplace.

EXCLUSIVE: Veteran Sony Pictures Television (SPT) executive Steve Kent is leaving his role to focus solely on The Young and the Restless.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor In the latest twist in Paramount Global‘s M&A saga, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global Management reportedly have made a bid to take Paramount private with an all-cash buyout offer of $26 billion. Sony and private-equity giant Apollo submitted an offer letter Wednesday to Paramount Global, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The report comes as Paramount Global board’s special committee established to consider M&A proposals is evaluating the best and final offer from Skydance Media to merge Paramount and Skydance, while keeping Paramount Global public.

Sony Pictures Television has brought on Kate Gill as SVP, Comedy Development. In her new role, she will focus on developing new comedy series for all platforms for the U.S. scripted division. Reporting to Colin Davis, EVP, Comedy Development, Gill will be based in SPT’s Culver City, CA headquarters and starts her new role on May 13.