Sony

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Sony Group Corporation
Sony

Type Conglomerate
Status Active
Led by Shuzo Sumi, Kazuo Matsunaga, Kenichiro Yoshida, Shigeki Ishizuka
Founder(s) Masaru Ibuka, Akio Morita
Founded May 7 1946
Head-
quarters
Sony City, Minato, Tokyo, Japan
Also known as
  • Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo (1946-1957)
  • Sony Corporation (1958-2021)
Subsidiary companies
Website https://www.sony.com/en/

The Sony Group Corporation (ソニーグループ株式会社,   Sonī Gurūpu Kabushiki Gaisha), stylized as SONY, is a large Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Tokyo. Sony has a longstanding working relationship with Toho and for this reason has experience with the Godzilla franchise. Its Hollywood film production division, Sony Pictures Entertainment, is the parent company of both Columbia Pictures and TriStar Pictures. The company also owns the anime distribution and streaming service Crunchyroll, having previously owned its predecessor Funimation since 2017. In November 2022, Sony reached an agreement to a multi-year distribution deal with Legendary Pictures,[1] though this excludes future films in the Monsterverse which will continue to be released by Warner Bros.

Overview

Product placement for Sony has been featured in many of Toho's kaiju films since the Showa era. In 1992, Toho sold the film rights to the Godzilla series to Sony's American motion picture branch, Sony Pictures Entertainment, in order to allow them to produce an American Godzilla film. Sony designated the project to their newly-acquired subsidiary, TriStar Pictures, which began production on a film in 1994. When the film was finally pitched to Sony's executives, they would not approve of the film's budget, causing director Jan De Bont to back out of the project and sending the film into development hell. Sony approached director Roland Emmerich in order to revive the project, who accepted on the condition that he could handle the film however he wanted and discard the original script. Sony agreed, and Emmerich began production of GODZILLA at TriStar, which was released in the summer of 1998. The film was met with almost worldwide disappointment, especially from fans, and performed well below Sony's expectations at the box office, despite making a profit. Sony Pictures had intended for a sequel to the film to be made, but the poor reception and merchandising sales from the film convinced them that a sequel would not be profitable, and the film was scrapped in favor of an animated series. After TriStar acquired Toho's Godzilla 2000: Millennium for American distribution, with a successful limited theatrical run, an American-made sequel to the film was pitched to Sony, who declined on the basis that they did not produce films with such small budgets. Sony considered producing a new American Godzilla film with no connection to the 1998 film, but decided against it and allowed their rights to revert to Toho in 2003.

Since that time, Sony and TriStar have distributed many of the Japanese Godzilla films in the United States on DVD. In 2014, Sony released the Toho Godzilla Collection on Blu-ray, including all of the Japanese Godzilla films from Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah through Godzilla Final Wars along with the Rebirth of Mothra trilogy, all in their original Japanese language along with the international English dubs. In the fall of 2015, Sony released the collection in a two-volume DVD set, minus the Japanese language tracks and Rebirth of Mothra 3. The video game Godzilla was negotiated to be exclusive to Sony's PlayStation systems. In addition, Sony localized The Criterion Collection's Godzilla, The Showa-Era Films, 1954-1975 Blu-ray box set in the United Kingdom in 2019.

Columbia Pictures distributed the films The H-Man, Battle in Outer Space, and Mothra theatrically in the United States, and perpetually retains the home video distribution rights to those films there, though it has currently sub-licensed them to Mill Creek Entertainment.

Selected filmography

  • Monster Hunter (2020) - Distributor [Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Releasing International][a]
  • The Kaiju Score (TBA) - Distributor[2]
  • Project Nemesis (TV TBA)[3]

Selected home video releases

See also

Trivia

  • In 2009, Justin Marks was announced to be writing a film adaptation of the 2005 giant monster video game Shadow of the Colossus for Sony.[4] In 2012, Josh Trank was announced as director,[5] and by 2013, Marks had been replaced by Seth Lochhead.[6] The film's last major development was in 2014, when it was reported that Trank had left the project due to scheduling conflicts with other projects, and had been replaced by Andrés Muschietti.[6]

Notes

  1. Screen Gems in the United States, and Sony Pictures Releasing International in all other countries except China, Japan, and Germany.

References

This is a list of references for Sony. These citations are used to identify the reliable sources on which this article is based. These references appear inside articles in the form of superscript numbers, which look like this: [1]

  1. https://variety.com/2022/film/news/legendary-entertainment-sony-deal-warner-bros-1235443325/
  2. D'Alessandro, Anthony (22 July 2021). "'The Kaiju Score': Brian & Mark Gunn Adapting AfterShock Comics Series For Sony, Escape Artists". Deadline.
  3. Petski, Denise (6 May 2022). "'Project Nemesis': Chad Stahelski To Direct Series Adaptation Of Jeremy Robinson Novel In Works At Sony TV". Deadline.
  4. Zeitchik, Steven; Kit, Borys (7 April 2009). "'Shadow of the Colossus' to become a movie". Risky Business. Archived from the original on 8 June 2009.
  5. Fleming Jr., Mike (23 May 2012). "'Chronicle' Helmer Josh Trank Takes On 'Shadow Of The Colossus' For Sony Pictures". Deadline.
  6. 6.0 6.1 Dornbush, Jonathon (5 September 2014). "'Shadow of the Colossus' film adaptation finds new director". Entertainment Weekly.

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