By Daybreak Chmielewski

(Reuters) – When Sony Corp (TYO:) Group teases “Gran Turismo,” its long-awaited adrenaline-fueled movie adaptation of Sony (NYSE:) PlayStation’s hit car-racing franchise on the CES 2023 expertise commerce present this week, it’ll actually be exhibiting off its new identification as a content-driven firm.

The film displays the transformation of the maker of the Walkman and Bravia TVs from a primarily hardware-focused innovator to broad-based leisure supplier. It additionally represents a major bridging of the divides between Sony Footage Leisure, Sony PlayStation and Sony Music, in accordance with a dozen present and former senior executives interviewed by Reuters.

“I outlined our identification as a artistic leisure firm with a strong basis on expertise,” Sony chief government Kenichiro Yoshida stated.

The movie’s look at CES on a stage sometimes reserved for big-screen TVs and robotic pets caps $10 billion in investments in music, video games and anime over the past 5 years.

“Gran Turismo” is one in every of 10 game-inspired movie and tv tasks in numerous phases of improvement.

HBO’s “The Final of Us,” a few man employed to smuggle a 14-year-old woman throughout a pandemic-plagued America, debuts on Jan. 15. “The New Yorker” steered the collection might break the curse of unhealthy video-game variations.

Final month, Amazon (NASDAQ:) Prime Video ordered “God of Struggle,” a reside motion adaptation of the PlayStation hit primarily based on Greek mythology.

Sony’s “artistic leisure” firm method extends past content material.

A Sony-Honda electrical automobile, scheduled to succeed in shoppers by 2026, is being framed as a rolling showcase of Sony’s leisure, gaming and digicam sensor prowess. 

It’s going to additionally generate recurring subscription income like different content material providers.

“Finally, we expect in the long run, the mobility area will change into an leisure area,” Yoshida stated.

The high-profile tasks, which couldn’t have occurred even three years in the past, grew out of normal conversations amongst Sony executives, as they sought a solution to work collectively extra successfully.

Sony resisted chasing after Netflix (NASDAQ:) with a rival service and fended off an activist shareholder’s name to promote or spin off its media and leisure property in 2013.

As a substitute it struck offers to offer films to Netflix and Walt Disney (NYSE:) Co’s Disney+ and collection to HBO, Amazon and Apple Inc (NASDAQ:)’s Apple TV+.

The shift is mirrored in Sony’s outcomes, with two-thirds of working revenue coming from video games, music and the movie studio. Working revenue rose 8% to 344 billion yen ($2.6 billion) for the July-September quarter, beating analyst estimates. In November, with the music enterprise offsetting weak spot within the video games group, Sony hiked its full-year working revenue forecast.

“This can be a full pivot of this firm into one thing that’s not an electronics firm,” stated Ulrike Schaede, a professor of Japanese Enterprise at UC San Diego’s Faculty of International Coverage and Technique.

Schaede stated the corporate now has a coherent company narrative that will make it simpler to unite the corporate’s divisions.

“That is the brand new Sony,” she stated. “Now, can they ship? I do not know.”

TREASURE CHEST

When veteran media government Tony Vinciquerra was recruited as chairman of Sony Footage in 2017, the division was reeling after a string of field workplace flops together with the 2016 reboot of the “Ghostbusters” franchise. DVD and Blu-ray disc income had plummeted below strain from streaming providers, and there have been rumors of a doable sale, media executives stated.

However Vinciquerra was attracted by the chance to leverage the corporate’s property: “Sony is the one firm within the media enterprise that has not solely tv or movie, however music, PlayStation, and expertise,” he stated in an interview.

Sony had struggled for many years to attain the “synergy” the corporate touted with its 1989 acquisition of Columbia Footage Leisure.

At greatest, these compelled collaborations ended up as product placement in a film or advertising promotion. At worst, they acquired in the way in which of adapting to the digital period.

Leisure executives then got here up with PlayStation Productions: a division inside the video games group situated on the Culver Metropolis studio lot and devoted to movie and tv variations.

It acted as a cultural attaché to Hollywood, “somebody who might discuss of their language,” PlayStation chief Jim Ryan stated in an interview, “in a non-confrontational, non-adversarial approach simply, you already know, simply attempt to do the perfect factor for each divisions.”

The consequence was “Uncharted,” final yr’s launch starring “Spider-Man’s” Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg in a hunt for Magellan’s misplaced treasure. The movie delivered $401 million in international ticket gross sales and have become the most-watched movie on Netflix when it was launched on the streaming service in August.

In the meantime, probably the most well-liked artists distributed by Sony Music, the Puerto Rican rapper Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, who performs as “Dangerous Bunny,” will star in “El Muerto,” a movie drawn from Sony’s Marvel Universe of characters, due out in 2024. Dangerous Bunny is a Rimas Leisure artist.

Sony Music Leisure CEO Rob Stringer stated Yoshida’s “gentle contact” has confirmed profitable. “Fairly frankly, the concepts are flying round, and everybody’s a lot, rather more comfy about speaking to one another,” Stringer stated.

This August will carry one other check of Sony’s technique when “Gran Turismo” hits theaters after languishing for 12 years.

The film relies on British racer Jann Mardenborough, who gained the 2011 GT Academy Europe at 19 and went on to a podium end on the 24-Hours of Le Mans in 2013.

Academy Award-nominated director of “District 9” Neil Blomkamp directs a forged that features “Lord of the Rings” star Orlando Bloom and “Stranger Issues” actor David Harbour.

“We’re telling a real story about want success,” PlayStation Productions chief Asad Qizilbash stated. “This child cherished enjoying Gran Turismo, and on the identical time, we’re celebrating the sport.”

(This story has been refiled to repair the date when activist investor requested spin-off to 2013 from 2020 in paragraph 13)