Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) is the television and film production unit of Japan-based corporate giant Sony.
Corporate Structure
Headquartered in Culver City, California, SPE is comprised of various studios and entertainment brands including Columbia Pictures and GSN.
List of holdings
Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE): Reported group sales in 2003 of $6.7 billion dollars.
Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group: With a library of more than 4,000 films (including 12 Academy Award for Best Picture winners), as of 2004 this unit of Sony distributes about 22 films a year under its various studio brands in 67 countries. The group owns studio facilites in the United States, Hong Kong, Madrid, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Japan. In addition to the below company-owned brands, Columbia Tristar also has a contract to distribute films for independent Revolution Studios.
Sony Pictures Classics (SPC): Specializes in acquiring distribution rights to independent and art films as well as producing lower-budget productions geared to limited audiences.
Screen Gems: Originally Columbia's animation division and later a popular television production company best known for TV's Bewitched and The Partridge Family, Sony revived the Screen Gems brand to develop mid-priced movies (production budget of between $20 million and $50 million) in specific genres such as science fiction, horror, black cinema and franchise films.
Sony Pictures Studios: The actual physical buildings, land and movie-making equipment properties in Culver City, California. Includes 22 sound stages, ranging in size from 7,600 to 43,000 square feet (700 to 4,000 mē)
Sony Corporation is traded on the Tokyo Stock Exchange under number 6758 and on the NYSE as SNE through ADRs.
Sony was founded by Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita on May 7, 1946 as the Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering with about 20 employees.
The name "Sony" was chosen for the brand as a mix of the Latin word sonus, which is the root of sonic and sound, the English word "sunny", and from the word Sonny-boys which is Japanese slang for "whizz kids".
SonyPictures Entertainment (SPE, SonyPictures Entertainment Inc.) is the television and film production/distribution unit of Japan-based corporate giant Sony.
SonyPictures Television Group: The successor-in-interest to Columbia's television division (first Screen Gems, later Columbia Pictures Television, Coca-Cola Television, TriStar Television (A division of Columbia Pictures Television), and Columbia TriStar Television), as of 2004 the unit was producing 60 titles for various television outlets globally.
SonyPictures Television International: Formed in 1994 as the worldwide television distribution arm for SonyPictures Entertainment.