Sony Pictures saw its fourth-quarter profits reach $84 million (11 billion yen), up significantly from when the film division posted a loss of $2.7 million the same quarter a year prior. And the Japanese conglomerate’s film division completed its fiscal 2021 with $1.67 billion overall (217.4 billion yen) operating income, up 55% from the previous year.
“Spider-Man: No Way Home” was the big hero for the year on the whole naturally, and it even had some lingering box office ticket sales into the start of 2022 that helped prop up Sony Pictures’ fourth quarter, as did “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” but the studio also saw a solid performance from “Uncharted,” which is based on its PlayStation video game franchise.
“Spider-Man” wasn’t the only factor however, as the media division saw the acquisition of the anime streamer Crunchyroll to the tune of $1.18 billion. Further, the international success of “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” and the $500 million licensing of “Seinfeld” to Netflix also weighed heavily in the increased profits of the media division.
However, Sony Pictures is projecting a fall of $900 million for its fiscal 2022 without a mega blockbuster like “Spider-Man: No Way Home” on the horizon.
Parent company Sony Corp had an operating income of 1.16 trillion yen for the year and 138.6 billion yen in the fourth quarter, though both were slightly below analyst expectations, which had predictions of 1.2 trillion and 148.5 billion yen respectively. Still, its operating income was up 26% compared to the 2020 fiscal year.
All that is in part due to PS5 sales being down for the quarter due to supply chain issues, but the PS5 is still on track to be the company’s fastest-selling game console ever.