Sony Pictures

Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) is a US subsidiary of the Japanese Sony group and is active in the production and distribution of television and film content. The company belongs to the so-called major studios. The company is headquartered in Culver City, California.

The emergence of the company was significantly shaped by the predecessor companies and their owners. The unsteady course of business in the 1980s increasingly unsettled the investors of the then parent company of Columbia Pictures (founded in 1924) and Tri-Star Pictures (founded in 1982/1983) - The Coca-Cola Company then outsourced the film business to a subsidiary. The outsourcing and merging of the two studios, which was expected to result in various savings, led to the creation of Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc. in 1987, the direct predecessor of SPE.

Sony Corporation of America (SCA) took over The Coca-Cola Company's film and television companies in 1989 and for the time being continued to run Columbia and Tri-Star as separate companies. Sony spared no expense after the takeover and bought Warner Bros. at a very high price two production managers who had just signed new long-term contracts with Warner. However, their results were mixed and led to a far-reaching restructuring of the company, which was tantamount to a new start.

Sony Pictures Entertainment was launched in 1991. Columbia and TriStar (which lost the hyphen from its name) were finally merged and functionally separated: Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group took over the film business, Columbia TriStar Television Group the television business. The former (subsidiary) companies have since been managed only as brands, which have established independent profiles in the following years:

Columbia Pictures

The oldest formerly independent company forms the core of Sony Pictures. All self-produced mainstream films are marketed under the Columbia label. Until 2004, "Columbia Pictures" was the dominant name for the entire company in the United States. In 2004, the old names (mostly Columbia TriStar Films outside the United States) began to be replaced by Sony Pictures worldwide.

TriStar Pictures

After the minimal "rebranding", the label continued to be used to market foreign-produced mainstream films until 1993, after which it was largely shut down. Until 2004, TriStar appeared practically only as a name component of various SPE companies and was only occasionally used for specific marketing purposes.

Sony Pictures Classics (SPC)

As part of the restructuring, SPC was formed in 1992 as a pure arthouse label whose main focus is the purchase and distribution of foreign films. Outside the United States, SPC does not operate independently, but only as part of the corresponding Sony Pictures agency, or as a distribution company that sells the films to third parties.

Screen Gems

From 1940 to 1946, Screen Gems was Columbia's animation studio, then in 1948 the brand was revived as Columbia's television production and distribution company until Screen Gems became Columbia Pictures Television in 1974. The second reincarnation of Screen Gems has operated as SPE's specialty label since 1999. Films that don't fit into the other labels are released under the label: Mid-budget films that fall between arthouse and mainstream, or foreign/co-produced mainstream films.

Columbia TriStar Television

Columbia's television business unit, formed in 1948 under the name Screen Gems, became Columbia Pictures Television in 1974, which was joined by Tri-Star Television under The Coca-Cola Company, analogous to its film counterpart Tri-Star Pictures. SPE formed Columbia TriStar Television from this in 1994, but it only existed under this name for a few years. In 2002, the company was renamed Sony Pictures Television.

The name Sony Pictures - outside of Japan and official documents - remained largely unused for a long time. The biggest exception since 1992 was the SPE arthouse label Sony Pictures Classics in the United States. It wasn't until 2002, with the rebranding of Columbia TriStar Television, that a larger branch of the business became known as "Sony." This trend has continued since 2004, even if it has struggled to catch on at times. In place of the sometimes very inconsistent names, the global distribution subsidiaries and the U.S. theatrical distribution arm operate under the unified name Sony Pictures Releasing. The agencies of the home entertainment division have taken the same step and are operating under the name Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. It is unclear whether the Columbia Pictures label will also be permanently replaced by the Sony Pictures label.

In addition:

Hacker attack in November 2014

In November 2014, in the run-up to the release of its North Korea satire The Interview, Sony Pictures became the victim of a hacker attack in which unreleased films and large amounts of internal data were stolen. The hackers initially demanded an as-yet unknown amount of money from Sony bosses. Subsequently, Sony was blackmailed by unknown individuals into releasing the data if the film The Interview was not withdrawn. On 19 December 2014, the US government accused the North Korean government of being responsible for the attacks and announced appropriate consequences. The government in Pyongyang repeatedly rejected the accusations and proposed a joint investigation of the cyberattacks to the US. To date (as of February 2015), it has not been conclusively clarified who is responsible for the hacker attack.

The FBI has been searching for Russian cybercriminal Yevgeny Bogachev in connection with the hack since spring 2015. However, the Russian Federation refuses to cooperate with the US authorities.

After the attack also made public confidential emails of SPE manager Amy Pascal, in which she had made lewd remarks about President Barack Obama and various actors and directors, Pascal came under heavy criticism. She was fired by Sony in February 2015.