Arms dealer

There’s “tremendous upside,” he says, for an unaffiliated studio, as Disney and others rein in content production in-house. “That’s going to create real opportunities for companies like Sony and Paramount and others to be an arms dealer of content to anyone in the world.”

Hence, Viacom’s so-called “arms dealer” strategy, which paid off when it sold domestic rights to Comedy Central’s South Park to WarnerMedia’s HBO Max on Oct. 29 in a deal worth up to $500 million.

Tom Rothman, Sony Pictures motion picture group chairman, has said many times, both on the record and in the private confines of Louis B. Mayer’s old office on the Sony lot, that he is an arms dealer in the arms race.

Unlike Paramount which has been saddled with debt from launching streaming service Paramount+, Sony remains an arms dealer, and financially nimble studio.