Spider-Man, Bad Boys And Jumanji Drive Sony To Increased Profits

05/13/2020 12:19 pm EDT

The movie business is currently in some of its darkest days during the coronavirus pandemic, but there is some good news for certain studios. Sony Pictures, for example, is getting some nice reports about increased profits right now (via Deadline), thanks to a string of successful movies released over the course of the last year. Spider-Man: Far From Home helped Sony score a nice win at the summer box office ($1.13 billion worldwide); Jumanji: The Next Level earned strong ($796 million worldwide) over the Christmas / New Year's window; and Bad Boys for Life was a hit for 1st quarter 2020 ($419 million worldwide).

Thanks to that nice run of movies, Sony Pictures Entertainment scored $628M in operating income, which was a 28% increase year-over-year from the $489M the studio previously raked in. Overall, Sony Pictures earned $9.32B in the 2019 fiscal years, which is well above the $8.87B earned the previous year. Worldwide revenue was a major source of Sony's success, with the aforementioned movies each earning strong in international markets. Spider-Man raked in $741M internationally, while Jumanji earned $796M and Bad Boys took in an impressive $214M before the coronavirus pandemic stopped its run.

Of course, the good news about Sony Pictures successful year is going to be heavily offset by the far more sobering reality of what the coronavirus pandemic has done to the entertainment industry. Sony's entire slate of blockbuster movies was pulled, with Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Spider-Man spinoff Morbius both landing in 2021. Peter Rabbit 2 has also been delayed until next year, while some major productions that Sony had on deck, like video game adaptation Uncharted and Sony-Marvel's Spider-Man 3 (both starring Tom Holland) have had to postponed their respective planned productions. Other big delays include Tom Hanks WWII flick Greyhound, and Kevin Hart film Fatherhood. That's not to mention the entire line of Sony TV productions that have also been put on pause.

That all said, Sony Pictures is in the same situation as every other Hollywood studio, right now, and a lot of the aforementioned films on the slate have strong box office potential. Or at least they did, once. We still don't know how the coronavirus pandemic is going to affect the larger theater chain business, and what the new standard will be for what constitutes "success" at the box office, in a post-quarantine world.

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