Panitch, who oversees the film business globally, said that the recent announcements of signing big projects are part of the commitment to the marketplace.
The Indian arm of the international production house, Sony Pictures International Productions (SPIP), is making a trilogy on Indian superhero ‘Shaktimaan’ and has also acquired rights to Chetan Bhagat’s novel ‘One Indian Girl’.
Also in the pipeline are ‘Dive’ by national award winner Ram Madhvani and ‘Major’, a film based on the life of Sandeep Unnikrishnan.
The company will enter the Tamil market and has collaborated with Kamal Haasan for an untitled project.
“The need to participate in local production is a big priority for us, especially in a market like India, where local production rules the business,” Panitch said. “The bar for theatricality is higher now than maybe it’s ever been.”
He, however, added that Sony will not make movies directly for streaming platforms. “The commitment to the theatrical is very fierce,” he said. “For a player like us, who does not globally own a streaming platform, we held on to our big titles like Venom and Spider Man. And the result is for everyone to see.”
While Venom did over $500 million in box office globally, except China, Spider Man crossed the $1.8-billion-mark.
“Our first big global release post-pandemic was Venom in October. It had a huge opening and I really think it invigorated the market. Then with Ghostbusters, and obviously Spider Man doing extraordinary business, we have had a nice run at the box office.”
Talking about the Indian market, he said that the company will be looking at regional films also, especially now that the
films are doing big business in Hindi markets too.
“We want to participate in the Indian pie with all the languages. So, our plan at this point is to hopefully have a more regular cadence of announcements of movies,” he said.
Panitch added that streaming platforms are making audiences more open-minded towards other language content but said that the mid-level content that may have been the bread and butter of studios in the past has moved to OTT and is not theatre worthy anymore.
“The business is becoming more binary,” he said. “The bigger movies are bigger than ever, and the ones that don’t work, have a much steeper drop, because people don’t have the patience anymore, and there’s so many alternatives to go back to.”
Talking about the big shift in the marketplace, he said that certain genres are now “not even possible” for theatres anymore.
