Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra defends ‘Spider-Man’ spinoffs.

When Tony Vinciquerra went to Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2017, it was far from business as usual.

Culver City Studio was still reeling from a 2014 cyber attack which exposed employees’ personal information and disclosed internal communications, damaging its reputation and leading to major financial losses. His film studio was in such a crisis that Tokyo-based parent Sony Corp. took a nearly $1 billion write-down just months before Vinciquerra was announced as the new chief executive and chairman.

At the time, he was working at private equity firm TPG, after a long career at Fox Networks.

“When people approached me about this job, I really didn’t want to go back to full-time work, to be in the office every day,” Vinciquerra, 70, said. “But what was really attractive was the potential.”

Under his leadership, Sony Pictures made a comeback.

The film studio revitalized several franchises, including “Jumanji” and “Bad Boys,” produced its flagship “Spider-Man” films, and began capitalizing on the PlayStation video game division by making movies and TV series based on that intellectual. property. The studio continued to nurture its key shows “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune,” weathering host changes for both. And branched out, making acquisitions in the anime market and in cinemas.

But the studio also had its share of struggles. Like any studio, Sony’s business has been affected by the pandemic and the double strikes last year. The company made an unsuccessful bid for Paramount Global earlier this year. The movie studio’s efforts to expand the “Spider-Man” universe into movies about characters other than the titular superhero have had middling results at the box office.

On January 2, Vinciquerra will he gives up his role and hand control to current Sony Pictures COO Ravi Ahuja in a planned succession that has been signaled for months.

Vinciquerra spoke to The Times before his final day to reflect on his more than seven-year tenure at Sony Pictures and what’s next for him. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Describe the state of Sony Pictures when you arrived in 2017.

The studio and business environment was still buzzing from the hack. There was so much damage from this in terms of privacy invasion and email sharing. It was palpable. You could feel it even in June ’17 when I joined.

The financial situation showed much room for improvement. The fact that Sony owned pictures, music, PlayStation and technology… there is no other company in the business that has that combination of assets. I didn’t understand why the company wasn’t trading IP back and forth between its units and they weren’t really working together. So I saw this as a great opportunity; that’s exactly why I decided to come here.

What were your main priorities when you started working?

All of our competitors either started, or were about to start, general entertainment streaming services, and we were under pressure to do that as well. But we realized pretty quickly that if everyone else is doing it — all seven or eight of our competitors were doing it — why should we? Knowing that they would fight tooth and nail to get subscribers, why wouldn’t we just be the weapons sellers to provide the weapons for the streaming services to fight each other and thereby improve our business?

We also had 110 cable networks at the time. And it was pretty clear that business was on the downslope. So we’ve laid out a strategy to get out of that business for the most part, except in the markets where cable networks are still doing very well, namely Latin America, Spain and India.

Looking back at what happened to all the streamers, the arms dealer’s decision seems quite prescient now.

It was pretty obvious, and so was the cable network’s decision. And really, what’s going on in business today, most streaming services will become profitable, but the cable networks are going in the wrong direction and that’s not going to change. This is indeed the problem for our fellow companies.

What do you think about the future of anime?

We haven’t launched Crunchyroll worldwide yet, so we still have a long way to go. The audience for anime is violently passionate – violent in a good way, not violent in a bad way. They are the most passionate audience ever. He has a great future. And unfortunately, others have now noticed and are starting to get into the business. Netflix and Hulu are starting to get into the business and drive up the cost of the product for us. But, you know, that comes with success.

Part of your mandate included strikes, and you did commented before about how you think union contract terms are driving up costs and forcing U.S. productions. You think so California’s new film tax credit proposal will it change things?

I don’t think the change in California will really impact (the situation) because it still doesn’t cover top actors, it doesn’t cover casting, and it’s still a very difficult process to do in California.

Not only have the union agreements increased costs, but California is also increasing costs, just the regulations and hoops you have to jump through to get production done here. My suggestion would be, as they leave this job, they really look at the schedule and the restrictions on the business and try to figure it out.

What do you think of the movie studio’s performance during your tenure?

For the most part, I’ve had very, very good results. Unfortunately, (“Kraven the Hunter”) which I released last weekend and my last film release, is probably the worst release I’ve had in 7 1/2 years, so it didn’t worked too well, which I still don’t. I don’t understand, because the movie is not a bad movie.

But I was very successful. We’ve exceeded our budgets every year we’ve been here, even through strikes and COVID, and maxed out bonuses in several years for all employees. It was a good run and the movie studio was a big part of it.

Back to ‘Kraven the Hunter’ Sony also had ‘Madame Web’ earlier this year which also underperformed…

Let’s just touch on “Madame Web” for a moment. “Madame Web” had a poor showing in theaters because the press just crucified it. It wasn’t a bad movie and it did great on Netflix. For some reason, the press decided they didn’t want us to make these Kraven and Madame Web movies, and the critics destroyed them. They did it with “Venom” too, but the audience loved “Venom” and made “Venom” a massive hit. These are not terrible movies. They just got trashed by critics in the press for some reason.

Do you think the strategy of the “Spider-Man” universe needs to be rethought?

I think we need to reconsider, just because he’s bitten by the snake. If we take out another, it will be destroyed, no matter how good or bad it is.

What do you think about the state of the industry by 2025?

A period of asset readjustment follows. It will be for the next year and a half to two. I think it will be a bit chaotic. The one thing we know for sure is that the demand for entertainment is not going down. It gets slightly different. But once all these companies get to the point where they are stable, they will have great success ahead of them.

2026 is going to be a great year in the film industry. And the TV business continues to evolve and our market share continues to grow, so we’re very happy there. And then we look at other businesses. The film and television business probably won’t be high-growth businesses, but we’re looking at other things. We have Crunchyroll, we have Alamo Drafthouse, and we’re looking at location-based entertainment projects. I’m pretty comfortable with where the company is right now. It is very stable compared to the rest of the business.

What made Sony interested in the Alamo Drafthouse business?

It’s a very different, very unique concept for watching a movie. It’s a very small business. So we need to grow in the markets that are important to the domestic box office.

Alamo, even though it only has 41 locations, has 4.5 million loyalty program members, so we have a built-in way to talk to their customers. This will be a very, very big advantage for us in the future. And secondly, Alamo Drafthouse’s customer profile is not very different from Crunchyroll. So we’re going to use it to promote Crunchyroll and we’re going to use it in a lot of other ways as well. It wasn’t a huge outlay of cash, but the results of what we’ll gain from it if we have an insight into our customers’ likes and dislikes will benefit us greatly in the long run.

After you quit, you’ll move on to a tiparole for 2025. What does that role look like?

I’m here to answer questions and I’ll be working with Sony Tokyo, but I’ll be in another office, hidden away so no one can find me. I don’t know. We’ll see how it turns out.

What are your plans for the future?

I don’t know yet. We had a lot of relationships from private equity firms and other investment-oriented companies. I won’t think about it until after the holidays. But it will most likely involve some return to private equity or investment companies, but it is not certain.

How would you describe your legacy at Sony Pictures?

Where I get my psychic reward is helping people do their jobs better and improve in their careers, and that’s how I judge how well I’m doing. The second part of this corollary is to leave a better place than I found it. And I think I’ve done that most every place I’ve been. I like to fix things and that’s how it all comes together.

I think they are leaving the place in a better place, but time will tell. It seems to be a very stable business and I think that’s the legacy.