The Big Picture (9/15/08): “Sony Classics specializes in survival”
My favorite Hollywood columnist LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein provides some insight into Sony Classics, one of the few survivors in the recent specialty division crash. How do they do it?
But having spent a bunch of time at the recently concluded Toronto International Film Festival with Sony Pictures Classics co-chiefs Tom Bernard and Michael Barker, I realized that they operate under a very different model than everyone else. If you want to gauge how their festival went, you have to wait till long after it’s over. Barker and Bernard don’t get into bidding wars — they invariably buy movies after the festival has ended, when the hot air has gone out of the balloon and the buying price has drifted back down to Earth.
It takes enormous discipline to stick to a business philosophy like that. Hollywood is littered with the ruins of companies, like Vestron and Artisan Entertainment, which started out small, had a hit or two, then got caught up in their own hype, grew too large too soon, and collapsed. But not Sony Classics:
In recent years, Barker and Bernard’s specialty division rivals have dismissed the longtime Sony chiefs as old farts, wedded to an outdated art-house model, noting that their box-office numbers have been in steady decline. But the duo, who’ll celebrate their 18th year working together in January, may have the last laugh. They are still here while many of their specialty division detractors are out of business or undergoing major downsizing. Sony Classics’ films don’t do the kind of business they used to do. Their high-water mark was 2000’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” which grossed $128 million in the U.S. alone. The division’s biggest hit over the last year was “The Counterfeiters,” which won an Oscar and took in $5.5 million domestically. Still, the company turns a steady profit each year. So how did they manage to avoid the collapse that capsized so many rivals?
“We’re just more disciplined,” says Bernard. “While others companies were embracing a gold-rush mentality and spending like crazy, we’ve stayed the same size as ever. We have 25 staffers — that’s the whole company. So we can market our movies more inexpensively than everyone else. We want to win the war, not the opening weekend.”
Upcoming Sony Classics’ releases include Rachel Getting Married, Ashes of Time Redux, I’ve Loved You So Long, and Waltz With Bashir.