Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman and CEO Ravi Ahuja is pointing to emotion as a key reason “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” has surged past expectations at the global box office.
Speaking Wednesday at the BofA Securities 2026 Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference in New York, Ahuja discussed the film’s outsized theatrical run, which has brought in more than $2.4 billion worldwide and ranks as the third-biggest theatrical release ever.
“It’s a tremendous result. We obviously hadn’t forecast that,” Ahuja said. “We thought it would do incredibly well, but we didn’t know that would do that well.”
According to Ahuja, the film’s connection with audiences comes from the way it balances its superhero scale with a more emotional approach. He said “really everybody came together to create a great thing,” while emphasizing that the movie itself “is very emotional.”
“So a little bit different to what some of the more recent superhero movies have been,” he said. “Still very much a superhero movie — there are a lot of big action scenes. It’s a lot of fun. But it’s emotional. Some people come away crying, so that is something clearly that resonated with the audience.”
A record-scale rollout for a major Sony franchise
Ahuja credited the film’s high audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and CinemaScore to “the incredible creative team,” naming director Destin Daniel Cretton and a cast led by Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, John Bernthal and Sadie Sink.
He also singled out producers Kevin Feige and Amy Pascal, saying they “did an amazing job,” while praising Sony’s film studio for its marketing and distribution work. Ahuja said “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” was distributed to more than 80,000 screens worldwide at the same time, calling that a record.
Within Sony Pictures Entertainment, Ahuja described “Spider-Man” as one of the company’s three biggest franchises, alongside “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune.” He said the character of Peter Parker continues to carry broad audience appeal, but stressed that execution remains essential.
“There’s so much appeal to the character of Peter Parker, right? So much appeal to the character, but you got to execute it right,” Ahuja said. “And this movie really did.”
As for when another “Spider-Man” film might arrive, Ahuja did not announce a date. “We don’t have a date for it yet,” he said, adding, “A couple years, right? Usually, but there’s a Spider-Verse movie coming next year.”
Sony’s streaming strategy remains central
Ahuja also used the conference appearance to discuss Sony Pictures Entertainment’s broader position in the industry. He described the studio’s role as an “arms dealer” to the rest of Hollywood, noting that Sony is an independent studio without a general-entertainment streaming arm.
That structure, he said, is part of what makes Sony’s exclusive worldwide pay-one windowing output deal with Netflix possible. The deal covers Sony films after theatrical and home entertainment and was described as the first of its kind in the industry.
“For one, it speaks to the value of the theatrical model, right?” Ahuja said. “So by being dedicated to theatrical, it creates a very high bar for the movies that you can make. For example, we can’t make 30 or 40 movies, right? You can make about a dozen really big movies because they all have to meet that threshold, and there’s a lot of marketing, right, that follows it.”
Ahuja said Sony’s films perform well when they reach Netflix or other platforms, and argued that the company’s independence increases the value of its output. If Sony had its own streaming service, he said, it would not make a global pay-one output deal and would instead keep the films for itself.
He added that the Netflix arrangement gives Sony “a lot more certainty and the ability to take some creative risk,” because the studio has a clearer view of how a film’s global value can play out after reaching a particular box office result.
Ahuja also pointed to Sony’s musical animated movie “K-Pop Demon Hunters,” which Netflix released and which became a major success in 2025. He said that when the project was first being developed in 2021, Netflix “felt like the right home,” and argued that the platform helped the film build over time.
“Had it been theatrical, I mean, boy, this is such a hypothetical. Who knows if it would have had a big opening weekend?” Ahuja said. “But it’s done incredibly well on Netflix.”
He also said Sony Pictures Entertainment is working on a sequel for Netflix. Discussing the franchise, Ahuja said Sony’s platform-agnostic approach lets the company reach audiences in different places and build content assets without being confined to one platform.
Ahuja on M&A: not Sony’s priority
Ahuja became CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment in January 2025 after previously serving as the company’s president and COO. He stepped down from the board of Roku shortly after taking the helm at Sony Pictures Entertainment. Roku recently struck a $22 billion deal to be acquired by Fox Corp.
Asked about Sony Pictures Entertainment’s appetite for mergers and acquisitions, Ahuja said large-scale dealmaking is not the studio’s focus.
“Mega M&A, if you call it that, buying a diversified large-scale media company or merging with one, isn’t our priority for us,” he said.
Ahuja said such deals can be disruptive, citing the work of getting a deal done, approved and integrated. He argued that the industry is changing quickly and that companies need to think about where it will be over the next five to 10 years rather than “drown in M&A.” He also questioned whether greater scale in content creation necessarily makes a major difference, saying, “These companies are not factories, right?”
He acknowledged that Sony Pictures Entertainment had been briefly interested in buying Paramount Global a couple of years ago, but said that interest was “really more about the IP” and consistent with a strategy of looking for intellectual property and capabilities. David Ellison’s Skydance Media ultimately bought Paramount, which is now trying to complete a $111 billion deal to merge with Warner Bros. Discovery.
On broader industry consolidation, Ahuja said he is “not too concerned about it,” adding that for Sony as a supplier, the health of buyers matters more than the absolute number of companies in the market.