How a Coca-Cola spinoff became the Hollywood studio owned by Sony
One of Hollywood's Big Five studios began life as a leftover from a soft-drink company. Coca-Cola bundled Columbia Pictures with TriStar in 1987, then within two years sold its stake to Sony, which paid billions, hired two producers another studio claimed, and had to trade away assets to settle the row.
Coca-Cola had owned Columbia Pictures since 1982. In September 1987 it announced a plan to fold its entertainment business into TriStar Pictures, in which it already held 39.6 per cent, and rename the combined firm Columbia Pictures Entertainment. Shareholders approved on December 15, and the deal closed three days later. Columbia and TriStar kept operating as separate labels under one roof, and their television arms merged.
Sony moved in September 1989, securing an option on Coca-Cola's 49 per cent stake at 27 dollars a share. It also agreed to buy Guber-Peters Entertainment for 200 million dollars so that producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters could run the studio. That caused trouble, because the pair were still under contract at Warner Bros, whose chairman Steve Ross threatened to sue. Sony settled by handing Warner half of Columbia House and cable rights to Columbia films, and Columbia swapped its share of the Burbank Studios for the old MGM lot. Altogether the purchase cost Sony 4.9 billion dollars, financed by five Japanese banks. The company took the name Sony Pictures Entertainment on August 7, 1991.
The studio's later history includes a few odd episodes. In 2000 a Sony marketing executive invented a film critic, David Manning, who happened to love Columbia releases that real reviewers panned; Sony pulled the ads and paid fines. In 2005 a Sony-led group bought MGM for 4.8 billion dollars. In 2015 it struck a deal letting Spider-Man, a character whose film rights it controls, appear in Marvel's shared film universe while keeping control of his solo films.
In 2024 Sony bought the cinema chain Alamo Drafthouse, making it the first major studio in more than 75 years to own theatres. A 1948 antitrust ruling had barred studios from owning exhibitors until 2020.
Source: Sony Pictures
