There’s a changing of the guard at Sony Pictures Entertainment, with chairman and CEO Tony Vinciquerra set to step down, and Ravi Ahuja set to become president and CEO beginning in 2025. Ahuja was elevated to president and COO earlier this year, a move meant to position him as a successor to Vinciquerra and give him experience across the company. Vinciquerra will remain with SPE as non-executive chairman through 2025.
“It wasn’t so much of a decision, but a process, because we started this two and a half years ago when I signed my last agreement was that this would be the target, that we would get Ravi ready for the job and promote him in March, and then hand it over at the end of the year,” Vinciquerra says. “The decision on my part at that point was that I had planned on doing this for a short period of time to help turn the company around, to fix it from where it was to the stable, solid place it is.” The veteran Hollywood executive joined SPE in 2017 in the aftermath of the devastating Sony hack, helping to turn the company’s balance sheet and strategic focus around.
Along the way he led SPE through the COVID-19 pandemic, last year’s Hollywood strikes and the larger shift toward streaming video. SPE, notably, opted not to launch its own broad-based streaming service, it has some niche offerings like the anime-focused Crunchyroll, preferring to sell its films and TV series to the streaming and TV giants. It was a move that, in hindsight, seems like a good o.
