Navigating Sony Pictures' Uncertain Path: Embracing Video Game Adaptations and Original Franchises

With 2024 mostly over, the studio that is in the weirdest position so far is Sony with some costly financial bombs that didn't resonate with critics or audiences. Paramount is in a similar situation, but that's mostly because it is M&A mode so this put's Sony in a weird rebuilding phase where they have the most potential in the future to be a major powerhouse as a studio.

Let's look at what they have so far. This year, Madame Web made back it's production budget excluding distribution, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire made $200 million on a $100 million budget (meaning it likely broke even including marketing and distribution), The Garfield Movie was a solid success with almost $250 million on a $60 million budget, but the largest success has come from Bad Boys: Ride or Die with nearly $400 million on a $100 million budget. Fly Me To The Moon was the first on paper failure for the studio making only $40 million on a $100 million budget while Harold and the Purple Crayon is likely to follow suit with a projected opening weekend of $6 million against a $60 million budget.

So with two successes so far this year, let's look to what's still to come with their remaining six movies this year. There's a chance that It Ends With Us does well for them this week, but Where The Crawdads Sing was not a huge success in 2022 and has a similar set up (major book with a large fanbase that gets a major theatrical release on a large budget) but at only $70 million and a slate with no other major romance movies upcoming. The easiest win will likely be Venom: The Last Dance which will likely make back its budget regardless of quality. That said, even if both of these movies make more money than expected, the year is still not shaping up to be a great one for Sony Pictures.

So with all those headwinds this year, their future slate is oddly empty. Hands down the biggest success for Sony has been their Marvel Studios co-productions, but we have no Spider-Man 4 announcement as of writing (although production has to start by next September under the contract). They also have a sequel to Uncharted in development, a Fred Astaire biopic, and a live-action adaptation of The Legend of Zelda, but there are no Ghostbusters films in development, no Men in Black, (mercifully) no Spider-Man-adjacent movies, and a smattering of video game adaptations that are in various stages of development.

It is this uncertainty that illustrates (to me at least) that Sony has the most potential in the future. I don't want to say the comic book movie bubble has burst but the age where even a bad comic book movie would do good money (the Age of Apocalypse if you will) is long gone as audiences have come to expect more from their big-budget comic book films. They appear to be backing off the movies based on Spider-Man villains, but what would be the best way to fill that void once those are gone? More Marvel Studios co-productions?

The best move is almost certainly to pivot from the comic book movie to the video game adaptation. Between The Last of Us, Sonic the Hedgehog, Fallout, and The Super Mario Movie, and even things like Twisted Metal and Pokémon: Detective Pikachu, video game adaptations have been doing very well with audiences. Sony Pictures Animation should be working on an Astro Bot or Ape Escape movie and it is baffling to me that Sony is outsourcing things like Horizon or God of War rather than developing them in house. There is a world where an Infamous or Wipeout movie would be a colossal hit. Don't even get me started about a Mercenaries movie, something I've talked at length about.

The other alternative is for Sony to do what I said Lucasfilm should do years ago which is pivot to being more of an incubator for future franchises. It's clear they're willing to dump $100 million on a movie that ends up not breaking even anyway, why not take that money and put it into adapting some of the best in new (and old) science fiction or fantasy? The second highest grossing movie of 2024 is Dune Part 2 and as a Dune fan I can say it's a risk to put that much money into an adaptation of that book. The success is the direct result of allowing a great director the opportunity to tell the story they want so why not take that chance, especially if you are just throwing the money away anyway?