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Shockingly, the 'Monster Hunter' movie trailer is full of giant beasts
Milla Jovovich has a pair of flaming swords to help her battle the behemoths.
Tom Holland's 'Uncharted' movie may have found its latest director
The directorial merry-go-round of Sony's long-gestating Uncharted movie has seemingly made another stop, this time to let Travis Knight on to try and finally make the film happen. Deadline reports the director of the well-regarded Kubo and the Two Strings and the Transformers spin-off Bumblebee is in talks with Sony Pictures over the movie, which is set to star Tom Holland.
PlayStation keeps making money, Sony phones keep losing it
The most interesting part of cracking open a fresh financial report from Sony is seeing whether the momentum behind the PlayStation 4 shows any signs of slowing down. Sony kinda spoilt that for us just after the new year, though, announcing that the PS4 was closing in on the 100 million milestone with 91.6 million consoles sold as of December 31st. The holiday season was appropriately busy for the PlayStation division. From October through December, aka the third quarter of Sony's fiscal year, 8.1 million PS4s found loving homes, compared with 9 million the previous year. Not bad considering the slowdown in sales that's a natural part of a console's lifecycle has been prophesied for some time now.
Sony really wants you to know it's not a tech company
Spider-Man, The Chainsmokers, James Cameron and Pharrell Williams. That's most of what I remember from Sony's press event at CES last night. Despite announcing new (giant!) TVs, headphones with Alexa and a wireless turntable, its 45-minute media briefing rarely touched on any new products. When Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida stepped on stage, he laid out that he planned to "shift our gears" and showcase the company's involvement in more creative endeavors. That meant fewer product flourishes and plenty of moments where Sony simply sang its own praises. At a show famed for hardware announcements, the company sidelined its own news.
'Venom' and 'Alpha' will be the first IMAX Enhanced 4K blockbusters
The 'IMAX Enhanced' tag that IMAX and DTS teamed up to create for home entertainment is continuing to expand with several announcements at CES. According to its backers, the label means that content is mastered using the latest "proprietary post-production process developed by IMAX while a "special variant" of DTS:X pumps up the audio to deliver an "immersive" IMAX experience at home. Today the group added three general outlets for streaming IMAX Enhanced content: Tencent in China, FandangoNow in the US and RakutenTV in Europe, plus Privilege 4K in the US for Sony TVs. Sony Pictures announced that Venom and Alpha will be among the first blockbuster movie titles available with the tag. while Paramount has also pledged support. Arcam, Elite, Integra, Lexicon, Onkyo, Pioneer and Trinnov are working on certified A/V receivers, while TCL has joined Sony in developing certified TVs. Meanwhile, an IMAX Certified Mode to optimize settings based on content is still in development.
PlayStation 4 sales are actually speeding up
Sony's nothing if not consistent. The company's latest financial results released today show everything's as it should be six months after new CEO Kenichiro Yoshida took the helm. Sony recorded nearly $19.6 billion in revenue for the three months ending September 30th, of which almost $2.2 billion was cold, hard profit. Those numbers are slightly better than last year's and last quarter's, meaning Sony's books aren't just stable, they're healthy. Predictably, the PlayStation division was responsible for the most revenue, pulling in more than double any other department barring financial services. Just as unsurprising is that mobile remains the only loss-making part of Sony's business.
Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. join Hollywood's open-source tech forum
Just months after its launch, Hollywood's first forum for open-source technology tools is adding more big names to its lineup -- along with its first software project. Sony Pictures Entertainment / Sony Pictures Imageworks and Warner Bros. are among the newbies, who'll be joining launch members including DreamWorks, Walt Disney Studios, Epic Games, Autodesk and Google Cloud.
US charges North Korean man linked to Sony hack and WannaCry
The US Treasury Department announced today that it has sanctioned one individual and one group connected to malicious cyber activities perpetuated by North Korea's government. Park Jin Hyok, a computer programmer, was sanctioned today along with Korea Expo Joint Venture, an agency he allegedly worked for. The Treasury Department claims Hyok is part of a conspiracy responsible for the 2014 Sony Pictures hack, the 2016 Bangladesh Bank heist and last year's WannaCry ransomware attack. The Department of Justice also confirmed to reporters that it has charged Hyok with extortion, wire fraud and hacking crimes, according to Motherboard.
DOJ will reportedly charge North Korean operative for Sony hack
The Justice Department will reportedly announce charges today against at least one North Korean operative connected to the 2014 cyberattack on Sony Pictures, the Washington Post reports. Officials told the publication that computer hacking charges would be brought against Park Jin Hyok, who is said to have worked with North Korea's military intelligence agency the Reconnaissance General Bureau. It's the first time these types of charges have been brought against an operative of North Korea.
Sony can't stop making money from PlayStation
Sony's new CEO Kenichiro Yoshida has been at the company's helm for just a few short months now, but fortunately, former chief Kaz Hirai left him an already successful company to run. Yoshida has his own designs for Sony, with a three-year plan to focus primarily on the entertainment and imaging businesses. It's important not to take the favorable position the company is in for granted, though, so we imagine Yoshida is pleased with Sony's latest financial results released today. There's nothing too extraordinary about the numbers, but Sony did record $17.9 billion in revenue for the three months ending in June, from which it extracted nearly $1.8 billion in profit. And yes, no points for guessing PlayStation is responsible for the bulk of that.
Sony posted a whole movie to YouTube instead of the trailer
That's certainly one way to drum up hype around a direct-to-DVD movie that's apparently getting a theatrical release some nine months after hitting retail. Whoops. Sony has since scrubbed everything related to Khali the Killer from its YouTube channel, but not before Gizmodo grabbed the screenshot below.
Facebook wiped Zuckerberg's conversations from people's inboxes
Facebook recently paid for full-page newspaper adverts claiming that it had a "responsibility to protect your information," adding that if it couldn't, it didn't "deserve it." It is, therefore, slightly unfortunate that just weeks later, the site has been forced to admit that it bent its own rules for the benefit of its leaders.
'Cowboy Bebop' director made a 'Blade Runner' animated short
Over 35 years since Blade Runner came out, its sequel is almost upon us. Blade Runner: 2049 hits theaters in less than a month. And (depending on who you ask) it's either been too long a wait, or it should never have seen the light of day. For anyone still on the fence, the film's marketing blitz is on hand to help part you from your cash. We've seen trailers, a VR tie-in, and a short prequel featuring Jared Leto's impeccable beard. Just in the last 24 hours, a new promo starring Dave Bautista has hit the web, along with another (more exciting) teaser: Sony Pictures just unveiled a new anime spinoff for the upcoming film.
Apple and Amazon reportedly pursuing James Bond film rights
Sony's distribution rights to the James Bond films expired with 2015's Spectre and MGM has been looking for a new distributor ever since. As of now, Warner Bros. is expected to land the rights, but two new rather surprising players have jumped into the game -- Amazon and Apple. Sony has also pursued a deal with MGM, as have Universal and Fox, but sources tell the Hollywood Reporter that the tech companies are willing to throw down as much as or more money than Warner Bros. to land the rights.
Redbox deals with Sony and Lionsgate bring discs with no delay
This year Redbox is trying to make a resurgence, adding kiosks after a few years of shrinking availability. Of course, if it's going to draw people in for disc rentals over streaming, it will need to provide the movies they're looking for and renewed studio licensing deals will help make that happen. This week it renewed an agreement with Sony Pictures that secured its movies, once again, for rental at Redbox the same day they go on sale, while Lionsgate made a similar arrangement a couple of weeks ago. As Home Media Magazine notes, recent renewals with Warner and Fox bring their movies to the box a week after they go on sale, leaving Universal as the lone holdout still insisting on a 28-day window. The simple fact is that physical media isn't bringing in as much money as it used to, and studios are more flexible about methods that will keep people using discs instead of Netflix. Of course, Redbox still trails the availability of streaming video-on-demand in many cases, but it's also much cheaper, at just $2 or so for a Blu-ray copy.
Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton is stepping down
Michael Lynton is moving on from Sony, to focus on being the chairman of Snap, Inc., the parent company of Snapchat. Lynton has been at the top of Sony Pictures for 13 years, a span which included the massive 2014 hacking incident that saw unreleased films, emails and other studio information released on the internet. At the time, his co-chair at Sony Pictures was Amy Pascal, she left the company in 2015. He's also been the CEO of Sony America since 2012, and Sony says that his departure will extend over the next six months as it works to find a replacement. In the meantime, Sony CEO Kaz Hirai will take over the title of Chairman and co-CEO of Sony Entertainment, and maintain a second office at Sony Pictures' headquarters in California.
'Emoji Movie' can probably fit its script in a single tweet
Listen: Nobody had high hopes for a movie based on language-abbreviating conversational images. In fact, it's probably against their broad-strokes ambiguity to give them life and personality in a film. But The Emoji Movie is coming in August 2017 and we all have to deal with that by watching the film's first trailer and queuing up our collective sighs.
Sony Pictures will stream live VR with Nokia's Ozo camera
Nokia made some great smartphone cameras back in the day, but we certainly didn't expect that to lead to the Ozo, a $45,000, 360-degree 3D virtual reality camera. Now, the Finnish company will provide expertise and Ozo cameras to Sony Pictures, which will use them to create VR content. The studio will also take advantage of the Ozo Live VR broadcast capability "to transport fans to Sony Pictures events that they couldn't otherwise attend," the company wrote.
Sony sued for not preventing piracy of movie leaked in 2014 hack
The fall 2014 Sony megahack leaked a massive amount of internal documents and content, resulting in plenty of fallout. Even two years later, they company is still not off the hook. The film To Write Love On Her Arms was one of four movies released online in the colossal data dump, and its producers are suing Sony Pictures failing to safeguard it from piracy thereafter.
Sony developing movie based on internet meme 'Slender Man'
Sony's said to be working on a horror film about "Slender Man," the paranormal character who rose to internet fame in recent years. According to The New York Times, Screen Gems, a studio that's part of Sony Pictures, is currently in talks to develop a movie based on the chilling meme. The report claims this future adaption doesn't have a complete script yet, but there's a chance production could start before the end of 2016. It'll be interesting to see how the story turns out, especially since Slender Man played a major role during a crime investigation in 2014. Back then, two 12-year-old girls were accused of stabbing a friend as part of a dark admiration for the fictional figure -- an outrageous and gruesome act, to say the least. Further details on the purported movie are scant right now, but we will likely find out more over the coming months.
