Company type | Division |
---|---|
Industry | Entertainment |
Founded | 1992New York, New York, U.S. | , in
Founders |
|
Headquarters | New York City, U.S. |
Key people |
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Products | Motion pictures |
Number of employees | 25 [1] |
Parent | Sony Pictures Entertainment (1992–1998) Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group (1998–present) |
Website | sonyclassics.com |
Sony Pictures Classics Inc. is an American independent film production and distribution company that is a division of Sony Pictures. It was founded in 1992 by former Orion Classics heads Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Marcie Bloom. [2] It distributes, produces and acquires specialty films such as documentaries, independent and arthouse films in the United States and internationally. As of 2015, Barker and Bernard are co-presidents of the division, which is a member of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). [3]
Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) was formed in 1992 by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard and Marcie Bloom, and set up as an autonomous division of Sony Pictures [2] to produce, acquire and/or distribute independent films from the United States and internationally. [4]
It has released films that have won 37 Academy Awards and received 155 nominations, including Best Picture nominations for The Father , Call Me By Your Name , Whiplash , Amour , Midnight in Paris , An Education , Capote , Howards End , and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon . [5]
SPC has a history of making reasonable investments for small films, and getting a decent return. [2] [6] [7] It has a history of not overspending. [2] [8] Its largest commercial success of the 2010s is Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011), which grossed over $56 million in the U.S., becoming Allen's highest-grossing film ever in the United States.
SPC has been a pioneer in theatrical distribution. In 2001 championed the Chinese-language film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , which earned the most Oscar nominations ever for a non-English-language film, and win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and a Golden Globe in 2001. The film earned over $213 million worldwide on a $17 million budget, including $128 million in the U.S. as a Sony Pictures Classics release. [9]
In 2006, SPC promoted The Lives of Others to an Oscar and BAFTA, after it was rejected by the Cannes, Berlin, Venice and New York Film Festivals. [10]
SPC occasionally agrees to release films for Sony's other film divisions; however, under its structure within Sony, none of the other divisions (including the parent company) can force SPC to release any film it does not want to release. [2] [11]
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a 2000 wuxia martial arts film directed by Ang Lee and written for the screen by Wang Hui-ling, James Schamus, and Tsai Kuo-jung. The film stars Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, and Chang Chen. It is based on the Chinese novel of the same name, serialized between 1941 and 1942 by Wang Dulu, the fourth part of his Crane-Iron Series.
The Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film is an award for documentary films. In 1941, the first awards for feature-length documentaries were bestowed as Special Awards to Kukan and Target for Tonight. They have since been bestowed competitively each year, with the exception of 1946. Copies of every winning film are held by the Academy Film Archive.
Focus Features LLC is an American independent film production and distribution company, owned by Comcast as a division of Universal Pictures, which is itself a division of its wholly owned subsidiary of NBCUniversal. Focus Features distributes independent and foreign films in the United States and internationally.
The 73rd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best of 2000 in film and took place on March 25, 2001, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards in 23 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Gil Cates and was directed by Louis J. Horvitz. Actor Steve Martin hosted the show for the first time. Three weeks earlier in a ceremony at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California held on March 3, the Academy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by host Renée Zellweger.
World cinema is a term in film theory in the United States that refers to films made outside of the American motion picture industry, particularly those in opposition to the aesthetics and values of commercial American cinema. The Third Cinema of Latin America and various national cinemas are commonly identified as part of world cinema. The term has been criticized for Americentrism and for ignoring the diversity of different cinematic traditions around the world.
James Allan Schamus is an American screenwriter, producer, business executive, film historian, professor, and director. He is a frequent collaborator of Ang Lee, the co-founder of the production company Good Machine, and the co-founder and former CEO of motion picture production, financing, and worldwide distribution company Focus Features, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal. He is currently president of the New York–based production company Symbolic Exchange, and is Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University, where he has taught film history and theory since 1989.
Participant Media, LLC was an American independent film and television production company founded in 2004 by Jeffrey Skoll, dedicated to entertainment intended to spur social change. The company financed and co-produced film and television content, as well as digital entertainment through its subsidiary SoulPancake, which the company acquired in 2016.
Lisa Cholodenko is an American screenwriter and director. Cholodenko wrote and directed the films High Art (1998), Laurel Canyon (2002), and The Kids Are All Right (2010). She has also directed television, including the miniseries Olive Kitteridge (2014) and Unbelievable (2019). She has been nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe and has won an Emmy and a DGA Award.
Thomas Edgar Rothman is an American businessman, film producer, film executive and current chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group. In this role, Rothman oversees all of the studio's motion picture production and distribution activities worldwide, including Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures, Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Sony Pictures Animation, Sony Pictures Classics, 3000 Pictures, Sony Pictures International Productions, Stage 6 Films and AFFIRM Films. Rothman joined Sony Pictures in late 2013 as chairman of TriStar and in 2015 was promoted to Chairman of Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, followed by the release in 2017 and 2018 of titles such as Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Venom, Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, Peter Rabbit, and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Under Rothman's leadership, the Motion Picture Group was returned to strong profitability and experienced several of its most profitable years in history with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Little Women. Driven by tentpoles such as Spider-Man: Far From Home, Jumanji: The Next Level, and Bad Boys for Life, fiscal year 2020 was the film studio's best in over a decade in terms of both ultimate profitability and operating income.
Orion Classics started in 1982 as the distribution label for the then independent film production company Orion Pictures, now owned by Amazon MGM Studios. It was relaunched in May 2018.
Another Year is a 2010 British comedy-drama film written and directed by Mike Leigh. It stars Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville, and Ruth Sheen. It follows a year in the life of an older couple who have been happily married for a long time, making them an anomaly among their friends and family members.
Jeffrey McDonald "J. C." Chandor is an Academy nominee American filmmaker, best known for writing and directing the films Margin Call (2011), All Is Lost (2013), A Most Violent Year (2014), Triple Frontier (2019) and Kraven the Hunter (2024).
David Linde has served as the CEO of Participant, chairman of Universal Pictures, co-founder of Focus Features, partner in the New York production company Good Machine, and owner of Lava Bear Films, where he produced the multi-Oscar nominated film Arrival. Films released during his tenures collectively earned more than $15 billion globally, with 204 Oscar nominations and 46 wins.
Tom Bernard is an American film distributor specializing in art cinema and is one of the co-founders of Sony Pictures Classics (SPC). Bernard and fellow Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker have worked together for approximately four decades and have won 41 Oscars.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny is a 2016 wuxia film directed by Yuen Woo-ping and written by John Fusco, based on the novel Iron Knight, Silver Vase by Wang Dulu. It is also a sequel to the 2000 film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The film stars Donnie Yen, Michelle Yeoh, Harry Shum Jr., Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Jason Scott Lee and Eugenia Yuan. The film was released in Hong Kong on February 18, in mainland China on February 19 and worldwide on Netflix outside China on February 26, 2016.
Barbara Robinson is an American film producer and studio executive who has worked her entire career in greater China. Over the course of three decades, Robinson has collaborated with many of the most prominent directors from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan — and played a critical role in the production of Ang Lee’s breakthrough martial arts title, Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon.
Compartment No. 6 is a 2021 drama road movie co-written and directed by Juho Kuosmanen, starring Seidi Haarla and Yuri Borisov, based on the 2011 novel of the same name by Rosa Liksom.
Michael Barker is an American film executive who has been co-president of Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) since 1992. Barker, Tom Bernard and Marcie Bloom, after working together at Orion Classics, founded SPC in 1992 as co-presidents. Barker and Bernard have now been co-presidents of SPC for over 30 years, producing, acquiring and/or distributing over 400 films there.
They stay behind the films and manage to find a significant core audience for a large number of them, with the occasional $130 million blowout like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,' [former United Artists president Bingham] Ray says. 'But they spend a fraction of what a major studio would spend to get the same number. Their philosophy is not to pile a lot of money on everything. They run a tight ship; they don't have an army of people working for them. They keep things simple.Alt URL
It doesn't release blockbusters or Best Picture winners, but its understated business plans reduce risk and keep it in business.
As Bernard explained, 'We're not looking for home runs; we're looking for singles and doubles.' [...] The tortoise-rather-than-the-hare strategy helped the company capture movies that were under the radar of buyers, and as Bernard argued, even sellers.
SPC had nothing to do with the DVD release, which Jones is unhappy about.