Sony 2007 Annual Report Download - page 25

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22
Sony United
2002
Can you talk a little bit about the growing importance of
the international market?
Under the leadership of Jeff Blake, Chairman of the
Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group (a division of SPE),
Worldwide Marketing & Distribution, we have brought in
new country managers and streamlined the whole
international theatrical marketing and distribution
network. We are also making more pictures with global
appeal. Two movies that really stood out this past year
were The Da Vinci Code and Casino Royale, both of
which did about two and a half times as well
internationally as they did in the U.S. That was gratifying
evidence of the success of our global strategy.
We’ve also seen certain markets grow significantly in
the last several years that hadn’t been real players in
the past, such as Russia and Korea. We have also had
more of our films being shown in the Chinese market.
In addition, we stepped up our investment in
international motion picture production in recognition
of the growing popularity of “local language” films in
markets around the world.
Let’s talk about the Home Entertainment division.
Home Entertainment performed well on two fronts. The
first is catalog product, which are films and television shows
in our library that have been previously released. The
second front is new releases, which also did extremely
well. For example, Casino Royale broke first week records
with 1.6 million units sold when it came out on DVD in
the U.K.
How about your television business results?
The television business in the U.S. has done very well.
Besides selling our films to television and cable networks,
we produce shows and had recent success with
comedies in the U.S., including ’til Death and RULES OF
ENGAGEMENT. We continue to have the best game
shows and soap operas in the U.S., and did a tremendous
job in having a number of pilots picked up by U.S.
broadcast and cable networks. The division also has a
vibrant advertising sales business and is now overseeing
domestic digital distribution.
Our international television division had a great year as
well. We had considerable success not only in selling films
and television shows to TV networks, mobile phones and
digital outlets around the world, but also by producing local
language programs in places like Russia and Germany,
where we are among the leading providers of TV
programming.
Let’s talk about digital distribution of content. As we look
at the next few years, what are the key opportunities?
The big opportunity is for people to be able to digitally
download movies to a portable device. It’s clear that people
are willing to buy movies in a digital format as long as they