Ravi Ahuja.
sonypictures.com
Sony Pictures Entertainment said Monday that its chief executive, Tony Vinciquerra, will step down at the beginning of next year and be succeeded by the studio's president and chief operating officer, Ravi Ahuja.
Ahuja, 53, will report to Kenichiro Yoshida, who runs the Sony Group, the Tokyo-based technology and entertainment giant. Vinciquerra, 70, will serve as non-executive chair of Sony Pictures through the end of next year.
Ahuja's appointment is a relatively tranquil change by the standards of Hollywood corner offices, where chief executives are sometimes replaced in a much less decorous fashion. Bob Bakish, chief executive of Paramount, was abruptly replaced in April during merger negotiations with Skydance, and Bob Iger's succession at Disney has been a yearslong operatic struggle.
Tranquility was the last word used to describe Sony seven years ago when Vinciquerra took over for Michael Lynton. The company was reeling from an industry-rattling cyberattack that laid bare many of the company's internal communications and held up an at-times unflattering mirror to Hollywood.
Vinciquerra oversaw Sony's TV and movie strategy at a time of profound disruption for the entertainment industry, as competitors like Disney were preparing to debut major streaming services. Vinciquerra took a different approach.
Sony instead adopted an "arms dealer" strategy, profiting off the early days of the streaming gold rush by selling movies and TV shows to traditional media companies like Disney and new colossi like Netflix.
"I thought to myself, 'Well, we could go do the same thing and spend billions of dollars and compete with everybody,'" Vinciquerra said in an interview Monday. "And just from experience, it was obvious that if you do the same thing as everybody else, you'll end up in the same place."
Ahuja joined Sony in 2021 to oversee all production businesses for Sony Pictures Television. Before that, he held executive roles at Disney, Fox Networks Group and Virgin Entertainment Group. He has helped steer some of Sony's deal-making, including the acquisitions of entertainment company Industrial Media and British production company Bad Wolf.
Vinciquerra predicts that Hollywood is in store for a disruptive period over the next few years, as traditional players figure out how to navigate the streaming world. But overall demand for entertainment will only increase, he said, leaving the remaining studios in a strong position.
"Chaos has started," Vinciquerra said.