CW: References to Woody Allen
Over this past weekend, Sony Pictures Classics actually got a decent hit. Not an amazing overperformer, but Wicked Little Lies grossed around $1.5 million from roughly 1,000 theaters. That puts its wide release per theater average just slightly behind the wide release opening weekend per theater average of the studio's Stan & Ollie from five years ago. It also instantly puts the title on track to exceed the domestic hauls of the studio's biggest movies of the last two years (Living and Parallel Mothers), neither of which made over $3 million. That latter detail really reflects how Sony Pictures Classics has been in a weird box office slump for years now. What's going on? How is an arthouse studio with Sony money sometimes even falling behind Bleecker Street at the box office? Let's explore the answers to those questions, shall we?
For the full context of the history of Sony Pictures Classics, let's look at a very important chart. Courtesy of The-Numbers, this chart chronicles the annual box office haul of the studio every year from 1997 to 2024.
Save for the studio's massive 2001 (when Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon bolstered the annual box office haul), the peak era of Sony Pictures Classics is from 2009-2015. Every year in this timespan, Sony Pictures Classics cleared $45 million domestically annually. All but two of those years saw grosses exceed $50 million. In hindsight, a key reason for this was Woody Allen. The distributor began releasing the man's movies annually with the 2009 title Whatever Works. While that feature went nowhere financially, the 2011 title Midnight in Paris revived Allen's career. Paris became the second-biggest Sony Classics release in history and his next three features each became among the only 26 Sony Pictures Classics movies to ever crack $10 million domestically. Even a lower-grossing entry like Magic in the Moonlight accounted for nearly 25% of the annual box office haul of Sony Pictures Classics.
It's also worth mentioning that Sony Pictures Classics was in a bit of a "in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king" scenario from 2009 to 2015.' This was a dark period for American arthouse cinema (hey, that should be the subject of a future In Laman's Terms column!). In 2008, Paramount Vantage and Warner Independent Pictures were both shut down. Miramax would finally cease operations in 2010 after being a shell of its former self in 2008 and 2009. A24 and NEON were years away from existing, let alone being notable arthouse players. Netflix still sent envelopes to your mailbox rather than plunking down $20+ million for the distribution rights to Sundance darlings. Fox Searchlight and Focus Features were still around in this era, but, the options for indie movies looking for arthouse distribution circa. 2010 weren't great. This gave Sony Pictures Classics an edge in getting buzzy titles and even just screens for its titles. Whereas Sony Pictures Classics was the 26th biggest studio domestically in 2023, this outfit was the 13th biggest studio of 2010 and the 14th biggest studio of 2012.
Unsurprisingly, the box office fortunes of Sony Pictures Classics took a downward spin once Woody Allen signed a deal to make movies with Amazon Studios. That deal kicked off with Cafe Society in 2016, a year when Sony Pictures Classics only cleared $32 million. This was the studio's lowest-grossing year domestically since 2004 and was weighed down by only one movie (The Lady in the Van) clearing $5 million. In this year, the studio had a string of severe box office duds like I Saw the Light, The Hollars, and The Bronze, the latter of which was the rare Sony Classics release to immediately bow in wide release. Unsurprisingly, Sony Pictures Classics slipped to the 17th spot among studios at the domestic box office in 2016. Among the studio's Sony Pictures Classics slipped behind were Bleecker Street, STX Entertainment (both of which were founded in 2015), and A24, which scored its first $20+ million grosser that year with The VVitch.
Sony Pictures Classics was feeling the lack of Woody Allen movies, but that wasn't the whole story here. After all, the man's 2015 feature Irrational Man was a box office flop, it wasn't like he was the only thing printing money for Sony Pictures Classics. Another issue was simply that the studio began missing out on the award season juggernauts that were previously the studio's bread-and-butter. In the history of Sony Pictures Classics, its biggest moneymakers have been Best Picture nominees like Howards End, Whiplash, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Capote, and others. As late as 2015, Sony Pictures Classics secured an impressive 18 Oscar nominations for a slew of movies. That was the second-highest number of Oscar nods for a single studio that year, only behind Fox Searchlight. Unsurprisingly, 2014 and 2015 (bolstered by box office hauls for those awards darling) each grossed $45+ million for Sony Pictures Classics.
Starting in 2015, though, studios like Netflix, Amazon, and others began shelling out big bucks for award season friendly movies. These outfits also began writing checks to filmmakers Sony Pictures Classics had worked with in the past, like Mike Leigh. It was all part of a long-term plan to make these outfits "respectable" studios. The heads of Sony Pictures Classics have been open in the past about not spending excessively on purchasing or marketing movies, a plan that sometimes works very well for them. However, this method was now getting steamrolled from Silicon Valley streamers with seemingly bottomless pockets. To rub salt into the wounds, Netflix was eyeballing subscribers from all around the world, meaning the streamer was going after international features that Sony Pictures Classics used to have a monopoly on.
The end result of these mid-2010s disruptions left Sony Pictures Classics with a much less diverse slate of titles than it used to handle. Sony Pictures Classics had always skewed a little older, but save for Call Me By Your Name, its 2017 line-up looked like it would only hold an interest for moviegoers over the age of 65. The studio also struggled to properly roll out and market buzzy foreign-language titles that it could've nailed in years past. Whereas A Separation actually made a solid $7 million in its 2012 theatrical run (which encompassed 282 locations at its peak), Toni Erdmann made just under $1.5 million domestically (it never played in more than 112 theaters). Sony Pictures Classics was getting hammered by excessive spending from its competitors, no question about that. However, it was also fumbling its release strategies for the quality movies it did secure distribution for.
Plus, its slate was becoming narrower and narrower in focus. The days of Sony Pictures Classics distributing mainstream-skewing Chinese fare like Kung Fu Hustle were long in the past. Now the studio was largely selling quiet "quirky" British movies aimed at old white people in the hope of producing the next Lady in the Van. With intense competition from arthouse studio newcomers, a drastically less diverse slate, and only one Best Picture Oscar nominee (Call Me By Your Name) from 2015-2019, it's no wonder this is when the Sony Pictures Classics box office slump came into play. Things got so dire that the studio only released two movies (The Wife and Stan & Ollie) that cleared $5 million each domestically across 2018 and 2019!
With 2019 becoming the third-lowest grossing year for Sony Pictures Classics since 1997, it was clear the studio was in a box office dry spell. In just under a decade, Sony Pictures Classics had gone from being just outside the top ten biggest studios of the year domestically to barely cracking the top 20 biggest studios of 2019. Is there any hope for a major comeback for the studio? At this point, it's hard to tell. A recent announcement that Scarlett Johansson's directorial debut Eleanor the Great will be a collaboration between TriStar Pictures and Sony Pictures Classics (the first time that's ever happened) indicates Sony hasn't forgotten about this struggling arthouse division. Perhaps Pedro Almodovar's English-language debut The Room Next Door (which will likely drop by the end of 2024) will be a sleeper hit for the studio. For now, though, not even the decent wide release expansion of Wicked Little Lies can fight back the reality that Sony Pictures Classics has been in a box office slump that's lasted nearly a decade now. Even as other arthouse studios like Neon and IFC Films are climbing to new box office heights domestically, Sony Pictures Classics is stuck in a financial stupor that shows no signs of subsiding.
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