Word: disneyized
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...Sony Corp. president doffed his jacket and donned a Men in Black T shirt for his big entrance. "Just a little marketing gimmick," jokes Idei. "But the guests congratulated us." Idei got hoots of approval for Sony Pictures Entertainment's biggest film of the year from the likes of Disney CEO Michael Eisner, Intel boss Andy Grove, Seagram's Edgar Bronfman Jr., Time Warner's Jerry Levin and DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg, to name...
Idei's quest is for Sony to combine Japan's technical wizardry with America's creative panache and thus become the global multimedia entertainment company. "Something," says Idei, "like a Disney or Time Warner with our manufacturing base in Japan." That means bridging technology and entertainment, not to mention the cultural chasm between Japan and America. Ultimately, Idei aspires to create a global wireless network, a world in which satellite communications bring interactive entertainment to every living room and den. Says he: "Convergence is happening not only between audio and video but between computers and communication. There is a fundamental...
...this impatience strikes Calley and colleagues as hardly fair. Once pathetic Sony Pictures is flush these days, having just become one of only two studios ever to gross $1 billion in a year (Disney has done it three times). Even without a cartoon lion, Sony reached that nice, round number in record time (Aug. 31, beating Disney's best date--Nov. 23--by a stretch). And Sony expects to surpass the industry record of $1.22 billion, if it can scrape up the remainder on films such as Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi thriller Starship Troopers (a picture it's splitting...
Sony Pictures has become a cornucopia of hits: Jerry Maguire, Anaconda, My Best Friend's Wedding, Air Force One (another split with Disney) and the summer's box-office champ, Men in Black, which has grossed $243 million in the U.S. alone. Funny thing is, these hits were put together by guys who got fired a year ago, after the studio suffered through more than five money-losing years that bottomed out with Sony Corp. taking a $3.2 billion write-off--essentially admitting its investment had been worthless. Despite having ably handled the flock of pictures he inherited, Calley...
...management deserves credit for what it has done right: savvy marketing and bold scheduling. "While we are living off the past at the moment, we are going to do more than a billion dollars this year, and that's not coasting." The studio didn't blink when Warner and Disney warned that Jerry Maguire would get steamrollered if it opened at Christmas, in competition with their respective offerings, Mars Attacks and The Preacher's Wife. According to Sony executives, Warner chiefs Bob Daly and Terry Semel even tried to enlist Tom Cruise to delay Jerry Maguire's Dec. 13 opening...