When Tony Vinciquerra arrived at Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2017, it was far from business as usual.
The Culver City studio is still recovering from a 2014 cyberattack that exposed non-public employee data and revealed internal communications, damaging its reputation and causing significant monetary losses. Its movie studio is in such stagnation that Tokyo parent company Sony Corp. suffered a writedown of about $1 billion just months before Vinciquerra was announced as its new CEO and president.
At the time, he was running for personal equity firm TPG after a long career at Fox Networks.
“When people approached me about this job, I really wasn’t looking to go back to work full-time, be in the office every day,” said Vinciquerra, 70. “But what was really attractive was the potential.”
Under his leadership, Sony Pictures returned.
The film studio revitalized several franchises, adding “Jumanji” and “Bad Boys,” produced its landmark “Spider-Man” films and began capitalizing on its sister video game division PlayStation by making films and television series based on this intellectual. property. The studio continued to expand its key shows “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune,” despite host changes for both. And it has diversified through acquisitions in the anime market and in theaters.
But the studio also had its share of struggles. Like every studio, Sony’s business was hurt by the pandemic and last year’s dual strikes. The company mounted a failed bid for Paramount Global earlier this year. The film studio’s efforts to expand the “Spider-Man” universe into movies about characters other than the titular superhero have had middling box office results.
On January 2, Vinciquerra will leave his position and current Sony Pictures COO Ravi Ahuja, as part of a succession that has been planned and reported for months.
Vinciquerra spoke to The Times before his final day to reflect on his more than seven years at Sony Pictures and what lies ahead. This verbal exchange has been edited for clarity and length.
Describe the state of Sony Pictures when you arrived in 2017.
The studio and corporate environment were still buzzing with piracy. This has caused a lot of damage in terms of privacy invasion and email sharing. It is palpable. You may even feel it in June 2017, when I arrived.
The financials showed a lot of room for improvement. The fact that Sony owned pictures, music, PlayStation and technology … there’s no other company in the business that had that combination of assets. I didn’t understand why the company wasn’t trading IP back and forth among its units, and they weren’t really working together. So I saw that as a great opportunity; it’s really why I decided to come here.
What were your top priorities when you took on this role?
All of our competitor companies either had started, or were about to start, general entertainment streaming services, and we were under some pressure to do that as well. But we realized pretty quickly that if everybody else is doing that — all seven or eight of our competitors were doing that — why should we? Knowing that they would be fighting tooth and nail to get subscribers, why wouldn’t we just be the arms dealer to supply the weapons for those streaming services to fight each other and thereby improve our business?
At that time, we also had 110 cable networks. And it was evident that this activity was in decline. Therefore, we have explained a strategy to withdraw from this activity for the most part, in markets where cable networks are still doing very well. well, specifically Latin America, Spain and India.
Looking back at what happened to all the streamers, the arms dealer’s resolution is quite prescient now.
It was pretty obvious, as was the cable network’s decision. And what’s happening today in the industry is that most streaming facilities will become profitable, but cable networks are going in the wrong direction and that’s not going to change. This is literally the factor for our business colleagues.
How do you feel about the future for anime?
We haven’t launched Crunchyroll globally yet, so we still have a long way to go. Animes are violently gripping: violent in a smart way, non-violent in a bad way. They are the most exciting of all time. He has a wonderful future. And unfortunately, others have noticed now and are starting to get into the business. Netflix and Hulu are starting to get into the business and are expanding the range of products for us. But, you know, it comes with success.
Part of your tenure included the strikes, and you’ve commented before on how you feel the contract terms from the unions are increasing costs and forcing productions out of the U.S. Do you think the new California film tax credit proposal will change things?
I don’t think the California replacement will really have an effect on [the situation] because it still doesn’t cover actors above the line, it doesn’t cover casting, and it’s still a very complicated procedure to implement in California.
Not only do union agreements have higher costs, but California also has higher costs, adding regulations and obstacles that will have to be overcome for production to take place here. My suggestion would be, as you leave this position, that you look very carefully at the program. and the restrictions imposed on the company and try to understand it.
What do you think of the functionality of the film studio during your tenure?
Most of us got very, very smart results. Unfortunately, [“Kraven the Hunter”] that we featured last weekend, and my last movie release, is probably the worst release we’ve had in 7 and a half years, so it didn’t do very well for Array, as It suits me. I don’t understand it, because the movie is not bad.
But we’ve been very successful. We’ve beat our budgets every year I’ve been here, even through strikes and COVID, and max bonuses several of the years for all the employees. It was a good run, and the film studio was a big part of it.
Going back to “Kraven the Hunter”, Sony had “Madame Web” earlier this year, which underperformed. . .
Let’s talk for a moment about “Madame Web. ” “Madame Web” underperformed in theaters because the press simply crucified it. It wasn’t a bad movie and it did very well on Netflix. For some reason, the press didn’t need us to make those “Kraven” and “Madame Web” movies, and the critics just destroyed them. They also did it with “Venom”, but the public enjoyed “Venom” and made “Venom” a big hit. They are not horrible movies. They were destroyed by press criticism, for whatever reason.
Do you think the strategy of the “Spider-Man” universe wants to be rethought?
I think we want to reconsider, just because it’s a snake bite. If we publish one, it will be destroyed, no matter how clever or bad it is.
What do you think of the state of the industry until 2025?
There’s a period of asset readjustment coming. It’s going to be for the next year and a half to two. I think it’s going to be a little bit chaotic. The one thing we do know for sure is that the demand for entertainment is not going down. It’s becoming slightly different. But once all of these companies get to the point where they’re stable, they’ll have a great run ahead of them.
2026 will be a great year for cinema. And the television business continues to do well and our market share continues to grow, so we are very pleased with that. And then we took a look at other companies. The film and television industry may not see much growth, but we are looking for other things. We have Crunchyroll, we have Alamo Drafthouse and we are looking for location-based entertainment projects. I am comfortable with the current scenario of the company. It’s very solid compared to the rest of the company.
What made Sony be in the deal with Alamo Drafthouse?
It’s a very different concept and very exclusive to watching a movie. It is a very small company. That is why we want to expand into markets related to the national box office.
Alamo, although only 41 locations, has 4. 5 million loyalty program members, so we have a built-in way to talk to your visitors. This will be a very, very great merit for us in the future. And second, Alamo Drafthouse’s visitor profile is rarely very different from Crunchyroll’s. So we will use it to advertise Crunchyroll and we will also use it in many other tactics. It wasn’t a huge outlay of money, but the effects of what we’ll gain from having an idea of what our visitors like and don’t like will benefit us greatly in the long run.
Following your departure, you will take on an advisory role by 2025. What does this role look like?
I’m here to answer questions, and I’ll be doing some work with Sony Tokyo, but I’ll be in a different office, hidden away so nobody can find me. I don’t know. We’ll see how it works out.
What are your plans for the future?
I don’t know yet. I’ve had a lot of contact with personal equity firms and other investment-oriented firms. He probably wouldn’t think about it until after the holidays. But there will most likely be some return for personal capital or investment firms, although it is not certain.
How would you describe your legacy at Sony Pictures?
Where I get my psychic praise from is helping other people do their jobs better and improve their careers, and that’s how I judge my performance. The second component of this corollary is to leave a place better than I found it. And I think I’ve almost gone. I like to fix things and that’s how everything works.
I think I leave this position in a greater position, but time will tell. I feel like it’s a very solid company and I think that’s the legacy.
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