Word: calley
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Thus John Calley, the chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, lost the opportunity to trumpet a major project in the works. Such are the caprices of show biz. But for Calley the collapse of the deal is particularly irksome, since Hollywood is clamoring for action from him as he marks his first year...
...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...
...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 has yet to shepherd a film of his own devising from script to screen...
...questions in the minds of agents and their star clients, and even on Wall Street, about Tokyo's long-term plans. With revenues pouring in, Sony doesn't appear to be spending that much. Is the strategy to crank up some dazzling results and then snag a buyer? Is Calley just a caretaker? This is his second turn at the helm of a Hollywood studio; he headed Warner Brothers from 1967 to 1980. An engagingly candid, out-of-the-box thinker, Calley, 67, is nevertheless running a business that has changed drastically. Some in the industry wonder whether...
...Calley says he does and dismisses speculation that Sony will sell. "It's a good story," he says. "Nothing that I've seen supports that idea." Sony has stated that it will consider selling shares in all or part of its entertainment operations to the public but plans to keep control. Besides, Calley argues, current 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...