Sony Eliminates Jobs to Streamline Marketing, Distribution

(Bloomberg) -- Sony Pictures, which releases a new installment of the “Hotel Transylvania” film franchise in coming days, is cutting about 5 percent of its global marketing and distribution staff, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Movie marketing will be more global and digitally focused, the Culver City, California-based division of Sony Corp. told employees in an internal memo seen by Bloomberg News. International and domestic groups will be joined into single teams, leading to the loss of about 25 jobs from a staff of 550, said the person, who asked not to be identified disclosing nonpublic information.

“The reorganization will help our department better reflect the realities of how movies are released today, and build the connective tissue needed internally and externally to be effective and efficient,” Josh Greenstein, who heads marketing and distribution for Sony Pictures Entertainment, said in the memo.

As a result, the studio is eliminating positions in research and strategy, publicity, media, operations, and the consumer and distribution groups, he added.

Newer forms of entertainment, like streaming, are pressuring incumbent Hollywood studios to get more efficient. Comcast Corp., the parent of Universal Pictures, and Walt Disney Co. are competing to buy most of 21st Century Fox Inc., which would shrink the number of major movie distributors. Sony has had some hits and misses over the past year and has reshaped its management team to turn its movie business around.

To contact the reporter on this story: Anousha Sakoui in Los Angeles at asakoui@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, Rob Golum

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