As he prepares to depart from Sony Pictures, CEO Tony Vinciquerra seemed to have few, if any, regrets about his seven-year run as studio head. That includes this year’s pair of “Spider-Man” spinoff bombs, “Madame Web” and “Kraven the Hunter.”
Early in 2024, “Madame Web” became one of the worst-reviewed films of the year and grossed just $100 million worldwide against a reported $80 million budget. “Kraven the Hunter,” the last Sony release under Vinciquerra’s leadership is doing even worse at the box office, having grossed just $43.8 million worldwide and counting after 12 days in theaters.
Despite the poor reception from critics and audiences, Vinciquerra stood by those films in an exit interview with The Los Angeles Times.
“I still don’t understand, because the film is not a bad film,” Vinciquerra said. ““Madame Web’ underperformed in the theaters because the press just crucified it. It was not a bad film, and it did great on Netflix. For some reason, the press decided that they didn’t want us making these films out of “Kraven” and “Madame Web,” and the critics just destroyed them.”
“They also did it with “Venom,” but the audience loved “Venom” and made “Venom” a massive hit. These are not terrible films. They were just destroyed by the critics in the press, for some reason,” he continued.
Sony’s comic book movie plans will return their focus to Spider-Man himself for the foreseeable future, with the animated film “Beyond the Spider-Verse” in production and a fourth live-action film starring Tom Holland set for release in 2026. As for the spinoffs, Vinciquerra acknowledged that Sony will have to rethink their approach to that “snake-bitten” series.
“If we put another one out, it’s going to get destroyed, no matter how good or bad it is,” he said.
Despite those major misfires, Sony Pictures on the whole has seen a major rebound under Vinciquerra’s tenure. In 2016, the year prior to Vinciquerra’s arrival, Sony Pictures Entertainment reported a $719 million loss for the Japanese tech conglomerate and was reeling from a mass email hack that had sent the company’s stocks spiraling.
“The environment of the studios and the business was still vibrating from the hack,” Vinciquerra said. “There was so much damage done by that in terms of invasion of privacy and sharing of emails. It was palpable. You could feel it even in June of ’17 when I joined.”
Since then, Vinciquerra has led Sony to a major rebound led by the Marvel Studios’ produced “Spider-Man” trilogy starring Holland. Formed through a partnership with Disney, the three films grossed a combined $3.9 billion at the global box office and has led to a production deal between Sony and Holland’s new production company, Billy17.
Beyond Spidey, Vinciquerra’s successes at Sony include films like “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” and the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s “It Ends With Us.” On the TV side, Sony navigated a major period of transition for its crown jewel game shows “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune” with the death of the former’s host, Alex Trebek, and the retirement of the latter’s host, Pat Sajak.
Sony has also become a top player in the anime space with the acquisition of Crunchyroll and became the first studio since 2002 to own a theater chain with the purchase of Alamo Drafthouse.
But perhaps Vinciquerra’s biggest impact on Sony was the decision to deviate from other major studios and not establish a streaming service, instead reaching a landmark distribution deal on its theatrical releases with Netflix.
“All of our competitor companies either had started, or were about to start, general entertainment streaming services, and we were under some pressure to do that as well,” Vinciquerra said. “But we realized pretty quickly that if everybody else is doing that — all seven or eight of our competitors were doing that — why should we? Knowing that they would be fighting tooth and nail to get subscribers, why wouldn’t we just be the arms dealer to supply the weapons for those streaming services to fight each other and thereby improve our business?”
After he steps down on January 2, Vinciquerra will remain at Sony in an advisory role through 2025. He will be succeeded by SPE President/COO Ravi Ahuja.
