It’s official: Tom Rothman has signed a multi-year extension of his contract as Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures’ Motion Picture Group. The deal will currently make Rothman the longest serving film chief in Hollywood, and that includes his run at 20th Century Fox.
Some have wondered whether Rothman would ever retire, and the fact of the matter is that he loves the movie business a tremendous amount. This is seen in him being a steadfast proponent of theatrical, and a believer in its future longevity, not just in franchises, but original movies as well. For Rothman, cinema is about the big swings. If theatrical is going to survive, originality must prevail, and sometimes that means co-financing some projects ensuring that they hit the screen.
The news comes as Sony is expected to have a big summer with Karate Kid: Legends on May 30 and Oscar winner Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later on June 20.
During Rothman’s reign at the Sony Pictures Motion Group, he has achieved record profitability over the last decade, and that even goes for franchise movies like Venom: The Last Dance which was made for $110M and minted close to $480M at the global box office. Most recently, Deadline reported that the studio’s feature take of Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us cleared $207M after all ancillaries and a global haul of $350M.
Rothman will report in to Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Ravi Ahuja, and he’ll oversee the studio’s motion picture businesses, including Columbia Pictures, TriStar Pictures, Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Animation, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Sony Pictures International Productions, and Sony Pictures Classics. Rothman also handles the studio’s live stage activities, which include MJ: The Musical.
The Sony Boss’ streak includes the highest-grossing movie in Columbia’s 100 year history, Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.9B worldwide box office, excluding China), the recently revived Bad Boys, Jumanji and Ghostbusters series, the Venom trilogy, Anyone But You, It Ends With Us, No Hard Feelings, The Woman King, Where the Crawdads Sing, The Equalizer trilogy, the Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Oscar nominated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Quentin Tarantino’s Academy Award nominee for Best Picture, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and Greta Gerwig’s Academy Award nominee for Best Picture, Little Women. Earlier this year, Sony Pictures Classics won the Academy Award for Best International Film for I’m Still Here.
Upcoming for Sony is Oscar nominee Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Stealing, Academy Award winner Taika Waititi’s Klara and the Sun, Kogonada’s A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, starring Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell, and Academy Award winner Sam Mendes’ audacious four Beatles films. Also in the works is the fourth installment of Spider-Man starring Tom Holland, Jake Kasdan’s next Jumanji film, and Nintendo’s live-action film of the smash hit video game, The Legend of Zelda. Horror franchises returning include I Know What You Did Last Summer, Insidious, and Zach Cregger’s new take on Resident Evil.
Rothman joined Sony Pictures in 2013 as Chairman of TriStar Pictures before being named Chairman of Sony Pictures’ Motion Picture Group in February 2015. His contract was extended in 2021 with CEO being added to his Chairman title. Previously, Rothman was at Fox for 18 years, serving as Co-Chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment from 2000 to 2012 and before that President of Twentieth Century Fox Film Group and President of Production for Twentieth Century Fox. There he oversaw numerous hits including, but not limited to Avatar and the X-Men franchise (he was a proponent of an unknown Hugh Jackman at the time to play the iconic Wolverine). He was the founder and first President of Fox Searchlight. Prior to Fox, Rothman was President of Worldwide Production for the Samuel Goldwyn Company, Executive Vice President at Columbia Pictures, and a partner at the New York entertainment law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz. Rothman was a Co-EP on the near $300M grossing Horton Hears a Who! and very early on in his career was a co-producer on the Jim Jarmusch cult 1986 movie, Down by Law, starring Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni, and John Lurie.
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