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Sony Pictures Classics

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Sony Pictures Classics, Inc.
TypeDivision
IndustryEntertainment
FoundedHollywood, California, U.S.
(1992; 30 years ago (1992))
FoundersMichael Barker
Tom Bernard
Marcie Bloom
HeadquartersNew York City, U.S.
Key people
  • Michael Barker (Co-President)
  • Tom Bernard (Co-President)
ProductsMotion Pictures
OwnerSony Entertainment
(Sony Group Corporation)
Number of employees
25[1]
ParentSony Pictures Entertainment
Websitesonyclassics.com

Sony Pictures Classics Inc.[2] is an American 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.[3] 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.

Discover more about Sony Pictures Classics related topics

Sony Pictures

Sony Pictures

Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment studio conglomerate that produces, acquires, and distributes filmed entertainment through multiple platforms.

Orion Classics

Orion Classics

Orion Classics started in 1982 as the distribution label for the then independent film production company Orion Pictures, now owned by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It was relaunched in 2018.

Tom Bernard

Tom Bernard

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 39 Oscars.

Documentary film

Documentary film

A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in terms of "a filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, and mode of audience reception [that remains] a practice without clear boundaries".

Independent film

Independent film

An independent film, independent movie, indie film, or indie movie is a feature film or short film that is produced outside the major film studio system, in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies. Independent films are sometimes distinguishable by their content and style and the way in which the filmmakers' personal artistic vision is realized. Usually, but not always, independent films are made with considerably lower budgets than major studio films.

Art film

Art film

An art film is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily for aesthetic reasons rather than commercial profit", containing "unconventional or highly symbolic content".

History

Co-founder and co-president Michael Barker
Co-founder and co-president Michael Barker

Sony Pictures Classics was formed in 1992, by Michael Barker, Tom Bernard, and Marcie Bloom, set up as an autonomous division of Sony Pictures.[3] The model of the company is to produce, acquire and/or distribute independent films from the United States and internationally.[4]

Sony Pictures Classics has released prestigious films that have won 37 Academy Awards and garnered 155 Academy Award 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]

Sony Pictures Classics has a history of making reasonable investments for small films, and getting a decent return.[3][6][7] It has a history of not overspending.[3][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.

Sony Pictures Classics has been a pioneer in theatrical distribution.

In 2001, Sony Pictures Classics championed foreign-language film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and it earned the most Oscar nominations ever for a non-English-language film going on to win the best foreign-language film Oscar and Golden Globe in 2001 — and at the box office, garnering more than $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 the movie had been rejected by Cannes, Berlin, Venice and the New York Film Festival.[10]

Occasionally, Sony Pictures Classics agrees to release films for all other film studio divisions of Sony; however, under Sony Pictures Classics' structure within Sony, all other divisions of Sony (including the parent company) cannot force Sony Pictures Classics to release any film that the division does not want to release.[3][11]

Discover more about History related topics

Sony Pictures

Sony Pictures

Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. is an American diversified multinational mass media and entertainment studio conglomerate that produces, acquires, and distributes filmed entertainment through multiple platforms.

The Father (2020 film)

The Father (2020 film)

The Father is a 2020 psychological drama film directed by Florian Zeller, in his directorial debut; he co-wrote the screenplay with fellow playwright Christopher Hampton based on Zeller's 2012 play Le Père, which is part of a trilogy that also includes Le Fils and The Mother. A French-British co-production, the film stars Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell, and Olivia Williams, and follows an octogenarian Welsh man living with dementia.

Call Me by Your Name (film)

Call Me by Your Name (film)

Call Me by Your Name is a 2017 coming-of-age romantic drama film directed by Luca Guadagnino. Its screenplay, by James Ivory, who also co-produced, is based on the 2007 novel of the same title by André Aciman. The film is the final instalment in Guadagnino's thematic "Desire" trilogy, after I Am Love (2009), and A Bigger Splash (2015). Set in 1983 in northern Italy, Call Me by Your Name chronicles the romantic relationship between a 17-year-old, Elio Perlman, and Oliver, a 24-year-old graduate-student assistant to Elio's father Samuel, an archaeology professor. The film also stars actresses Amira Casar, Esther Garrel, and Victoire Du Bois.

Whiplash (2014 film)

Whiplash (2014 film)

Whiplash is a 2014 American independent psychological drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle, and starring Miles Teller, J. K. Simmons, Paul Reiser and Melissa Benoist. The film follows the ambitious music student and jazz drummer Andrew Neiman (Teller), who is pushed to his limit by his abusive instructor Terence Fletcher (Simmons) at the fictitious Shaffer Conservatory in New York City.

Amour (2012 film)

Amour (2012 film)

Amour is a 2012 French-language romantic drama film written and directed by the Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke, starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva and Isabelle Huppert. The narrative focuses on an elderly couple, Anne and Georges, who are retired music teachers with a daughter who lives abroad. Anne has a stroke that paralyses the right side of her body. The film is a co-production among the French, German, and Austrian companies Les Films du Losange, X-Filme Creative Pool, and Wega Film.

Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris is a 2011 fantasy comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen. Set in Paris, the film follows Gil Pender, a screenwriter, who is forced to confront the shortcomings of his relationship with his materialistic fiancée and their divergent goals, which become increasingly exaggerated as he travels back in time each night at midnight.

An Education

An Education

An Education is a 2009 coming-of-age drama film based on a memoir of the same name by British journalist Lynn Barber. The film was directed by Lone Scherfig from a screenplay by Nick Hornby. It stars Carey Mulligan as Jenny, a bright schoolgirl, and Peter Sarsgaard as David, the charming conman who seduces her. The film was nominated for 3 Academy Awards in 2010: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay for Nick Hornby, and Best Actress for Carey Mulligan.

Capote (film)

Capote (film)

Capote is a 2005 biographical drama film about American novelist Truman Capote directed by Bennett Miller, and starring Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role. The film primarily follows the events during the writing of Capote's 1965 nonfiction book In Cold Blood. The film was based on Gerald Clarke's 1988 biography Capote. It was released September 30, 2005, coinciding with Capote's birthday.

Howards End (film)

Howards End (film)

Howards End is a 1992 period romantic drama film directed by James Ivory, from a screenplay written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala based on the 1910 novel of the same name by E. M. Forster. Marking Merchant Ivory Productions' third adaptation of a Forster novel, it was the first film to be released by Sony Pictures Classics. The film's narrative explores class relations in turn-of-the-20th-century Britain, through events in the lives of the Schlegel sisters.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a 2000 wuxia martial arts adventure 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 pentalogy.

Woody Allen

Woody Allen

Heywood "Woody" Allen is an American filmmaker, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades. Allen has received many accolades, including the most nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, with 16. He has won four Academy Awards, nine BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards and a Grammy Award, as well as nominations for a Emmy Award and a Tony Award. Allen was awarded the Directors Guild of America Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995, an Honorary Golden Lion in 1995, the BAFTA Fellowship in 1997, an Honorary Palme d'Or in 2002, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2014. Two of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".

The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others

The Lives of Others is a 2006 German drama film written and directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck marking his feature film directorial debut. The plot is about the monitoring of East Berlin residents by agents of the Stasi, East Germany's secret police. It stars Ulrich Mühe as Stasi Captain Gerd Wiesler, Ulrich Tukur as his superior Anton Grubitz, Sebastian Koch as the playwright Georg Dreyman, and Martina Gedeck as Dreyman's lover, a prominent actress named Christa-Maria Sieland.

Film library

Source: "Sony Pictures Classics", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2022, August 15th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_Classics.

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References
  1. ^ "Sony Pictures Classics Bosses Shop Cannes Quality". ABC News. Retrieved July 28, 2010.
  2. ^ "Subsidiaries - Sony Pictures Entertainment". Sony Pictures. Retrieved July 31, 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d e Thompson, Anne (October 17, 2006). "Sony Pictures Classics at 15". The Hollywood Reporter. Archived from the original on February 9, 2012. Retrieved March 4, 2010. 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
  4. ^ "Sony Pictures Classics – About Us". SonyClassics.com.
  5. ^ https://scopeweekly.com/2021/11/19/sony-pictures-classics-to-release%E2%80%AFjuho-kuosmanens%E2%80%AFcompartment-no-6-in-theaters-on%E2%80%AFjanuary-26-2022%E2%80%AF/
  6. ^ Pond, Steve (November 16, 2009). "Sony Classics' Embarrassment of Oscar Riches". The Wrap. Retrieved July 28, 2010. It doesn't release blockbusters or Best Picture winners, but its understated business plans reduce risk and keep it in business.
  7. ^ Kaufman, Anthony (January 29, 2008). "PARK CITY '08 | Sundance Buying Spree Stirs Talk; Sony Classics Adds "Baghead," "River," and "Wackness" to '08 Slate". Indiewire. Retrieved February 9, 2012. 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.
  8. ^ "Duncan Jones is Unhappy About Moon – Thompson on Hollywood". Indiewire. April 1, 2010. Archived from the original on June 4, 2010. Retrieved July 28, 2010. SPC had nothing to do with the DVD release, which Jones is unhappy about.
  9. ^ "Hollywood Flashback: 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' Captured Oscar Gold 20 Years Ago". The Hollywood Reporter. January 10, 2021.
  10. ^ "LAFF: Sony Pictures Classics' Tom Bernard, Michael Barker Get Spirit of Independence Award". The Hollywood Reporter. June 17, 2014.
  11. ^ Ross, Matt (February 6, 2006). "Translating foreign pix to U.S. hits: SPC finds creative solutions to bring home best in overseas fare". Variety.
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