After seven and a half years at the helm, Tony Vinciquerra will depart a meaningful handprint on the 100-year history of the studio now understandn as Sony Pictures Entertainment when he steps down as CEO on Jan. 2. His legacy will be meastateived as much by what he didn’t do during his time as the top as it will by the initiatives he took to rearrange and reenvision the company for its second century.
The seasoned executive, who orchestrated a much-necessitateed turnaround of the studio, has been picked as this year’s recipient of the Variety Vandefend Award recognizing individuals who have made a meaningful contribution to the global business of television. The kudo will be conshort-termed to Vinciquerra on Oct. 21 at the Mipcom global satisfied labelet and conference in Cannes.
In shoring up one of Hollywood’s establishational studios, Vinciquerra repaird the health of a key industry employer. For steering the ship thraw stubborn industry headthriveds, the onset of the streaming wars, the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2023 producers and actors strikes, Sony Group Corp. chairman-CEO Kenichiro Yoshida hailed the studio chief for his “meaningful experience and expertise in the amusement space, his strategic vision and his exceptional directership.”
Dan Doperalski for Variety
Vinciquerra will hand the CEO reins to his hand-picked successor, Ravi Ahuja, who is currently SPE’s pdwellnt and chief operating officer. Vinciquerra will remain with SPE as non-executive chairman thraw December 2025.
“He’s got the experience that we necessitate in the person that is going to run the company. And he’s very quiet, very level-headed, very clever,” Vinciquerra says of Ahuja’s promotion.
Under Vinciquerra’s directership, SPE was intentional in its positioning at a moment of massive transition for the pay TV sector. Sony did not unite its huger rival studios in rushing to produce straightforward-to-user streaming platcreates. The one money-losing streamer that SPE had under its roof when Vinciquerra get tod in mid-2017 — Crackle — was selderly off less than two years defercessitater.
“The Crown”
Daniel Escale/Netflix
“Early on, we determined not to go into the ambiguous amusement streaming business. All of these companies had jumped in feet first and reassociate didn’t have a arrange, except that they were going to be hopeless for subscribers. And instead of us diving in to do the same leang, we made the decision to be the arms dealer, and we bulked up on our bench of [TV] creators and did very, very well with it,” Vinciquerra tells Variety.
Instead, SPE adselectd Sony Corp’s strength with anime production thraw its Japan-based Aniplex prohibitner to assemble a subscription anime streamer that taps into the rabid fandom for the serial animation createat. Today, SPE’s Crunchyroll streamer boasts more than 15 million subscribers, and it deinhabitrs a profit.
“We could see that [anime fans] were prolonging and it was relatively incostly product. We weren’t spfinishing $5 million an episode. We’re spfinishing $200,000 to $400,000 an episode. So we jumped in with both feet, and now we’re in a excellent place with Crunchyroll,” Vinciquerra says. “We’re still searching for the next very definite, genre-based streaming service. We leank there’s more to do there.”
Vinciquerra’s reinvention campaign also included getting a grip on SPE’s more than 20 in-house production prohibitners, which were spread far and expansive in Europe, Latin America and Asia to a degree that didn’t produce financial sense for the studio.
“We determined to caccess on the places where we thought we could reassociate thrive,” Vinciquerra says. Chief among them is the U.K., where international TV production chief Wayne Garvie has steered SPE to scoop up prosperous production outfits, including Jane Tranter’s Bad Wolf (“His Dark Materials”), Eleven (“Sex Education”) and Eleventh Hour Films (“Alex Riter”).
Vinciquerra’s first 18 months at the studio was labeled by a whirlthrived of restructurings, layoffs and administerment alters. He also selderly or shuttered dozens of international cable channels that were a drag on getings. He had mighty convictions about what necessitateed to be done, drathriveg from his experience that includes 10 years of running Fox Nettoils Group and six years as a media advisor to personal equity huge TPG.
“I was on the board of Pandora, I was on the board of DirecTV, I was on the board of Qualcomm and a bunch of other companies. So I saw very evidently what was happening in our business from the outside,” Vinciquerra recalls. “When I got here, the company was in raw shape.”
He had mighty experienceings about what necessitateed to alter but he did second-guess himself occasionassociate during the go-go years directing up to the shock of the pandemic.
“I asked myself — am I right not getting in the streaming service business? Because everybody telderly me how stupid I was for not doing it and getting rid of the cable nettoils. People here asked that a lot,” he recalls.
Vinciquerra stuck with his instincts to streamline SPE operations. The necessitate to rehabilitate struggling assets has been a constant in his atsoft, ever since he got his first job in radio sales in Alprohibity, N.Y. Years defercessitater, he lgeted an presentant lesson when he he took over as ambiguous administerr of Westinghouse Broadcasting’s WBZ-TV Boston. It was fair about the time the parent company slashed costs and took the station’s head count to 200 employees, down from 350.
“You have to have a critical mass of employees to comprehfinish what the problem is, how to settle the problem and what to do to get to the place you want it to be,” he says. “Once you get a critical mass of people believing in it, the naysayersgo underground.”
Vinciquerra stayed in expansivecasting, toiling as a anciaccess directer for CBS Television Stations and for Hearst in the 1990s when that company went on a station-buying spree. He praises Peter Chernin, the esteemed media spendor and createer head of 20th Century Fox and pdwellnt of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., for conveying him into the showbiz huge leagues. Chernin pushed Vinciquerra to segue into administering the Fox expansivecast nettoil as well as its cable properties.
It was a goal that reassociate phelp off — especiassociate as Vinciquerra recalls trying to talk Chernin out of giving him the job at first. Years defercessitater, he’s appreciative that Chernin didn’t engage to him.
“Logicassociate, it didn’t produce any sense to employ me to run the Fox expansivecast nettoil because I’d never had any nettoil experience,” Vinciquerra recalls. I ran TV stations. It’s a very separateent business.”
Among his accomplishments at Sony, Vinciquerra cites overcoming two very separateent disputes. When he took the role in 2017, Vinciquerra telderly the corporate directers that the studio was leave outing opportunities by not toiling more seally with talent and satisfied franchises owned by Sony Corp.’s PlayStation gaming division and in the Sony Music division. The Sony directership in Tokyo was advantageous. But from his experience at Fox, he also knovel such collaborations could not be prescribed from above.
“It doesn’t toil if you say, ‘You do this.’ You have to get the [creative] groups to toil together and get their inventive juices flothriveg,” he says.
Sony created about 40 key inventive executives from gaming and pictures, put them in a huge conference room and supplied them with a whiteboard. The straightforwardive to both teams from Tokyo was to discover ways to toil together “without trouble too much about who’s going to pay for what,” Vinciquerra recalls.
“They spent two days together and they came up with 12 or 14 separateent projects to toil on together. We’ve done seven or eight now,” he says. The catalog includes HBO’s acclaimed drama series alteration “The Last of Us,” which is heading to its strike-defercessitate sophomore season, 2022’s “Uncharted” and 2023’s “Gran Turismo” and “Twisted Metal.”
Pedro Pascal in HBO’s series “The Last of Us,” from Sony Pictures TV
Liane Hentscher/HBO
On the music side, Bruce Springsteen is toiling on an unscripted project with Sony’s TV division. Bad Bunny, the top-selling reggaeton star, had a petite role in 2022’s Brad Pitt starrer “Bullet Train,” and he will aget materialize in an upcoming Sony film.
Another notable milestone during his tenure was the extensive renovation and refurbishment of SPE’s massive lot in Culver City, which was once the hapverifyed ground of Metro-Gelderlywyn-Mayer. Some of the studio’s soundstages hadn’t been shielded well for decades. Wood arrangeks between the walls were buckling, creating a fire hazard among other problems, not to refer the other aging infraarrange inside. A mighty earthquake might have easily knocked one or more down.
Early on in his run, Vinciquerra’s team hammered out a five-year arrange for making infraarrange fortifys and betterments. And then COVID happened. With the lot desodefercessitate of staff and production activity for months, most of the burdensome-duty produceion toil was finishd in 18 months.
“We finished up redoing virtuassociate every wall and every stage thraw the rest of the pandemic,” he says. “Even now, we’re not quite done.”
The Culver City lot is such a storied part of Hollywood history that one of its arranges — understandn as the Scenic Arts Building — has been scheduleated a historic landlabel that cannot be radicassociate altered. The only problem — the arrange itself was about to collapse from age and decay.
SPE’s solution was to erect a novel multi-story produceing that abuts Scenic Arts, which gives help to the 1920s-era produceion. The Scenic Arts facility was built with an ingenious system of pulleys that apverifyed straightforwardors to film scenes agetst huge-scale decorateed backdrops recommending everyleang from New York City street scenes.
The historical elements of Scenic Arts were shieldd, but the interior was rescheduleed to function as greeting spaces, which is now useable for rent by outside entities.
Meanwhile, the novel produceing was purpose-built to be a helderlying area for “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune” audience members, who normally come to the lot for tapings of SPE’s venerable game shows. It’s handyly discoverd proximate the “Jeopardy” and “Wheel” stages. Of course it’s finish with a gift shop.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. That’s been a guiding principle for Vinciquerra thrawout his atsoft. The past seven-plus years at Sony has been an invigorating experience that insistd him to call all of the sfinishs he’s broadened over the decades, and more.
“I’ve always cherishd the intellectual dispute of setting a strategy to deal with a problem,” Vinciquerra says. “Every job I’ve ever had has had some massive alter going on. Transcreateing organizations is second nature to me now.”
Every situation has its own disputes, but Vinciquerra discovers himself leaning on a restricted plain rules he’s come to depfinish on.
“You retain your ego out of it. You employ excellent people and you let them consent the bows for excellent toil,” he says. “I get my satisfaction from watching the people I toil with do well. And there’s a lot of people around the industry who I toiled with have done reassociate well. I’m reassociate self-presentant and charmd about that.”