Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., the movie studio subsidiary of the Japanese electronics maker, is laying off nearly 250 people and eliminating nearly 100 open positions in an effort to cut costs.
Chief Executive Michael Lynton and studio co-chair Amy Pascal announced job cuts of 3.5 percent of the studio’s staff worldwide in a staff memo sent out Tuesday afternoon.
“Our studio remains profitable, but over the past five months, the deepening global financial crisis has begun to impact some of our lines of business, such as television syndication, DVDs and advertising sales,” they said in the memo.
“These economic effects have, regretfully, made it necessary to take the step we had hoped to avoid, and worked hard to minimize: reducing our headcount.”
Less than 150 people will be laid off in the United States, most in Los Angeles, along with less than 100 people overseas. Nearly 100 open positions will not be filled.< /P>
The announcement follows other cost cutting moves made in October by the Culver City-based studio, which distributed “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” in January and the James Bond flick “Quantum of Solace” in November.
In October, the studio moved to reduce overtime, travel and executive benefits to cope with an economic downturn. But conditions have worsened since then, Lynton and Pascal said.
According to industry association, The Digital Entertainment Group, U.S. home video sales and rental revenue fell 5.5 percent in 2008 to $22.4 billion, despite a near tripling of Blu-ray disc sales to about $750 million.
The market is down from its peak of $24.9 billion in 2004, with a slowdown caused by the maturing DVD format accelerated by a pullback in consumer spending.
In January, Sony Corp. predicted its first full-year loss for the fiscal year to March since 1995. A month earlier, the company announced it would cut 8,000 of its 185,000 jobs around the world , plus 8,000 temporary workers who aren’t included in the global work force tally.
Review: Director Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” Starring Robert Pattinson
So you think YOUR job is bad?
Sorry if we seem to be lacking empathy here. But however crummy you think your 9-5 routine is, it'll never be as bad as Robert Pattinson's in Bong Joon Ho's "Mickey 17" — nor will any job, on Earth or any planet, approach this level of misery.
Mickey, you see, is an "Expendable," and by this we don't mean he's a cast member in yet another sequel to Sylvester Stallone's tired band of mercenaries ("Expend17ables"?). No, even worse! He's literally expendable, in that his job description requires that he die, over and over, in the worst possible ways, only to be "reprinted" once again as the next Mickey.
And from here stems the good news, besides the excellent Pattinson, whom we hope got hazard pay, about Bong's hotly anticipated follow-up to "Parasite." There's creativity to spare, and much of it surrounds the ways he finds for his lead character to expire — again and again.
The bad news, besides, well, all the death, is that much of this film devolves into narrative chaos, bloat and excess. In so many ways, the always inventive Bong just doesn't know where to stop. It hardly seems a surprise that the sci-fi novel, by Edward Ashton, he's adapting here is called "Mickey7" — Bong decided to add 10 more Mickeys.
The first act, though, is crackling. We begin with Mickey lying alone at the bottom of a crevasse, having barely survived a fall. It is the year 2058, and he's part of a colonizing expedition from Earth to a far-off planet. He's surely about to die. In fact, the outcome is so expected that his friend Timo (Steven Yeun), staring down the crevasse, asks casually: "Haven't you died yet?"
How did Mickey get here? We flash back to Earth, where Mickey and Timo ran afoul of a villainous loan... Read More