Sony Loss

Sony's movie division isn't (apparently) raking in the dough.

Sony Pictures Division, the Japanese conglom’s unit comprising Sony Pictures’ studio and TV networks, posted a loss of $103 million for the April to June quarter despite a 7% increase in revenue. ...

Happily, Angry Birds, grossing $336 million worldwide, is part of Sony's solution and not the problem.

But the company doesn't seem to have a clear idea of the kind of film slate it wants to create. Super heroes? (Spider-Man VI) Topical dramas? (Money Monster) World War II movies? Sony doesn't release a huge number of movies so branding is important.

Which brings us to Sony Pictures Animation. Inside the animation division, artists have long complained that executives don't have any vision of where they wan SPAt to go. ("Keeping Amy Pascal happy" was never much of a program). SPony Animation's new topkick Kristine Belson could well goose the division to bigger and better projects, but the executives who preceded her were (as Sony artists tell it) too often floundering.

There are a number of pictures in the production pipeline; hopefully they'll perform and make the company proud.