You’ve got to hand it to Sony — they always find a way to f*ck things up.
The studio is coming off an absolutely brutal stretch at the box office, and that’s not even counting their decision to sell off “KPop Demon Hunters” straight onto Netflix. In the last 12 months alone, Sony has racked up flop after flop with almost surgical precision. “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.” “Karate Kid: Legends.” “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey.” “Caught Stealing.” “Anaconda.” One after another, DOA.
The only semi-bright spot? “28 Years Later.” And even that underperformed relative to expectations. When your lone “hit” still feels like a disappointment, you’re in real trouble.
Which brings us to another one of Sony’s self-inflicted wound of all: “Send Help.”
The Sam Raimi thriller was originally set up at Sony, but according to The Wrap, the studio began eyeing a streaming-first release in the wake of COVID. That’s when Raimi said hell no — he took his movie and found 20th Century.
“The studio, at the time, said, ‘We can’t make this as a theatrical film. We could make it as a lower-budget, controlled streaming film,’” Raimi explained.
That was a non-starter.
“I don’t mean to be a snob,” Raimi told Sony executives, “but I’m designing this as an audience experience. I wanted the interaction of the theater to make it work, because I know that flavor, and I need that. I design my movies to play upon the audience in the theater. I really do. I think it’s a different approach you take.”
Raimi wasn’t interested in watching one of his films quietly materialize on streaming, swallowed whole by the algorithm. So he pulled “Send Help” and took it elsewhere, eventually landing at 20th Century Studios, now under the Disney umbrella and run by Steve Asbell.
The lesson here couldn’t be clearer, yet studios keep pretending it isn’t: dumping movies onto streaming is rarely the smart move. Time and again, theatrical-first releases have proven their value — “Smile,” “Evil Dead Rise,” “Moana 2,” “Lilo & Stitch.”
The end result is that “Send Help,” budgeted at $35-40M, has earned strong reviews and topped the box office last week, exceeding expectations, with a $20M domestic tally.
Sony didn’t just lose “Send Help.” They lost another chance to stop the bleeding. And somehow, they still don’t seem to realize it.
Freeman is far from retired. Case in point, all the straight-to-VOD movies he’s been making these past 10 years. Scrolling through his filmography, the last true “Hollywood” year Freeman had was in 2016.