Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra Steps Down, Ravi Ahuja Named CEO

There’s a altering of the guard at Sony Footage Leisure, with chairman and CEO Tony Vinciquerra set to step down, and Ravi Ahuja set to turn into president and CEO starting in 2025.

Ahuja was elevated to president and COO earlier this 12 months, a transfer meant to place him as a successor to Vinciquerra and provides him expertise throughout the corporate. Vinciquerra will stay with SPE as non-executive chairman by way of 2025.

“It wasn’t a lot of a call, however a course of, as a result of we began this two and a half years in the past after I signed my final settlement was that this could be the goal, that we might get Ravi prepared for the job and promote him in March, after which hand it over on the finish of the 12 months,” Vinciquerra tells The Hollywood Reporter. “The choice on my half at that time was that I had deliberate on doing this for a brief time frame to assist flip the corporate round, to repair it from the place it was to the steady, strong place it’s.”

The veteran Hollywood government joined SPE in 2017 within the aftermath of the devastating Sony hack, serving to to show the corporate’s stability sheet and strategic focus round. Alongside the best way he led SPE by way of the COVID-19 pandemic, final 12 months’s Hollywood strikes and the bigger shift towards streaming video.

SPE, notably, opted to not launch its personal broad-based streaming service (it has some area of interest choices just like the anime-focused Crunchyroll), preferring to promote its movies and TV sequence to the streaming and TV giants. It was a transfer that, in hindsight, looks like one, with firms like Paramount+, Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal all pouring billions of {dollars} into their very own streaming companies, with restricted returns as of but.

“In case you run your small business with frequent sense and give attention to the essential components of what drive the enterprise, you will be actually profitable. And in addition [you need to] not get caught up in in traits, and give attention to what your strengths are, and go ahead with them,” Vinciquerra says of his tenure. “I believe we’ve carried out that and put us in a fairly good place, and I believe it’s going to actually repay for the longer term. I additionally suppose that the following couple of years are going to be quite tough for the enterprise, as a result of all these firms should undergo the transition, whether or not it’s mergers, consolidation, gross sales, purchase, bankrupt, no matter.

“However on the finish of that, the one factor we actually know for certain is that the demand for content material just isn’t happening,” he provides. “The demand for folks to be entertained just isn’t going away. If something, it’s turning into much more essential to folks’s lives. The businesses which can be left and are financially steady at that time, together with this one, will likely be very profitable and have a protracted future forward of them.”

Ahuja, in the meantime, joined SPE in 2021 to supervise the manufacturing companies for Sony Footage Tv, in addition to SPE’s India companies. He additionally oversaw SPE’s M&A exercise, together with the acquisitions of Industrial Media, main U.Okay. manufacturing firm Dangerous Wolf and VFX firm Pixomondo, in addition to the sale of GSN Video games to Scopely. He additionally cast nearer ties between SPE and Sony’s PlayStation gaming division with the creation of PlayStation Productions, and spearheaded this 12 months’s acquisition of Alamo Drafthouse.

Earlier than becoming a member of SPE, Ahuja was president of enterprise operations and CFO of Walt Disney Tv.

Ahuja will report back to Sony Group Company chairman and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida and Sony Group Company president, COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki.

Sony Footage Leisure contains the Sony Footage movie and TV studios, in addition to manufacturers like Columbia Footage, Display screen Gems, TriStar Footage and Crunchyroll. Among the many franchises in its portfolio are Males in Black, Ghostbusters, Karate Child and Jumanji. SPE additionally has the rights to producer Spider-Man movies and TV sequence from Marvel.

“The extraordinary turnaround at SPE over the past 10 years wouldn’t have been attainable with out Tony’s deep expertise and experience within the leisure area, his strategic imaginative and prescient and his excellent management,” mentioned Yoshida in a press release. “Below Tony’s watch, SPE grew to become a critically essential a part of our efforts to maximise the worth of our IP and discover synergies throughout all our leisure and expertise companies, and it stays a key driver in Sony Group’s ongoing company methods to lean additional into the inventive and leisure areas. I wish to thank Tony for his years of dedication and management at SPE, and for his invaluable help throughout the group firms throughout his profitable profession at Sony.

“Since becoming a member of SPE in 2021, Ravi has been on the middle of Tony’s management workforce, navigating the unprecedented challenges of at the moment’s media and leisure surroundings and positioning SPE for additional development,” he continued. “Ravi brings with him years of expertise from his time at among the world’s most profitable leisure firms, and we stay up for working extra carefully with him in his new function as President and CEO of SPE.”

“Once I stepped into this function seven and a half years in the past, I might’ve by no means imagined the extraordinary business disruption and alternative we’d face,” added Vinciquerra. “I’m stuffed with immense gratitude for this distinctive firm and its profound legacy in Hollywood historical past. I’m persistently impressed by my good and resolute colleagues. Collectively, towards the percentages, we achieved outstanding success and have persistently confirmed that this can be a neighborhood constructed on ardour and resilience. Thanks for making these previous seven and half years probably the most gratifying of my profession. My honest appreciation goes to Kazuo Hirai for providing me this chance in 2017, and to Kenichiro Yoshida and Hiroki Totoki for his or her management and unwavering belief and help through the years. I’ve the utmost confidence that SPE will proceed to thrive within the years forward and know that Ravi is the fitting chief to take SPE ahead.”

“It’s my privilege and honor to take the helm at SPE,” mentioned Ahuja. “This can be a particular place — an iconic studio with a unprecedented 100-year historical past of storytelling. Because of Tony’s outstanding management, we’ve main companies with clear methods and are arrange for even larger success within the years to return. I’m energized by the alternatives forward and am fortunate to work alongside 1000’s of proficient colleagues world wide at SPE and at our Sony sister firms. I’m grateful for Tony’s mentorship, steerage and friendship by way of the a long time, and I thank Yoshida-san and Totoki-san for entrusting me with this essential function.”