Studio Report Cards: Sony

TheWrap has done a series of Studio Report Cards assessing how well — or not — the major studios did in terms of box office performance in 2010. I’ll be featuring excerpts from those articles each day for the next week or so. Today: Sony:

Sony
Grade: A-
A painful December, when the bombing of James L. Brooks’ dramedy “How Do You Know” blemished an otherwise great year. 

In 2010, Sony left the likes of “Iron Man” and “Twilight” to others, and bet on that rarest of Hollywood commodities these days: original, star-driven vehicles.

It’s not a strategy currently in vogue — with rivals such as Warner Bros. loudly proclaiming that its focus will shift to releasing more tentpoles and fewer films overall. But the surprise is that it seems to be working, enabling Sony to pass $2.5 billion at the worldwide box office this year.

They may not have cut a broad swath through the box office, but films such as “Salt,” “The Other Guys” and “Grown Ups” racked up impressive grosses, mostly by marrying concept with star power.

True, sometimes the gambit didn’t pay off — audiences recently declined a trip with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie in “The Tourist” — and the last couple of months have seen several other costly disappointments. But for the most part the studio managed to turn its releases into, at the very least, respectable doubles.

“If you put the right people in the right roles, like Angelina Jolie in an action move, it works,” Jeff Blake, Sony’s chairman of worldwide marketing and distribution, told TheWrap.

Sony’s best streak was over the summer, when “Salt,” “The Other Guys,” “Takers,” “The Karate Kid,” “Resident Evil: Afterlife” and “Grown Ups” all opened at or near the top of the heap.

Tomorrow: Universal.