If fictional Daily Bugle Editor-in-Chief J. Jonah Jameson were real, he would be right for once to blame Spider-Man: Thanks to the release of both “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and its spinoff, “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” Sony Group Corporation’s media and entertainment division Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. reported $1.3 billion in profits during the third quarter of 2021, a 129% leap from the $177 million that it reported for the same period from 2020.
Culver-City-based film and television studio Sony Pictures announced its third-quarter earnings Feb. 1 via an earnings call from its parent company’s offices in Tokyo, where Sony Group Corporation Executive Deputy President and Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki reported $4 billion (461.2 billion yen) in revenues, an increase of 270% from the $1.56 billion (191.2 billion yen) it earned in the third quarter of 2020.
With ticket sales of $1.7 billion for “No Way Home,” the third Spider-Man film starring actor Tom Holland as the iconic web-slinger ended 2021 as the highest-grossing film of the year, followed in third place by “Venom,” with $502 million in box office revenues. Additionally, “No Way Home” has become Sony’s most successful film of all time.
The company also showed gains in other areas. Profits climbed in the third quarter by 12% for Sony’s games and network service divisions, from $704 million to $810 million year over year, but it dipped 4% from $515 million to $480 million during the period for its music division.
Despite the fact that Adele’s latest album “30,” which Sony distributed, is the worst-selling of her career, it remains the only music release in 2021 to exceed sales of more than 1 million copies — twice as many as any other, according to Bloomberg.
Sony additionally revealed that its licensing of 1990s sitcom “Seinfeld” to Los Gatos-based streaming giant Netflix Inc. drove higher television sales for the quarter, while Sony’s media networks division experienced an increase in revenue due to its acquisition of San Francisco-based anime streamer Crunchyroll Inc. in August 2021.
