Sony released its Q1 financials yesterday, reporting a 2% revenue increase that was largely driven by The Garfield Movie, anime and gaming.  

The company’s first quarter runs from April 30 to June 30, and it generated US$20.5 billion in sales during this period. At the beginning of the year, its US box-office revenue was still suffering residually from 2023’s dual Hollywood strikes. But things turned around significantly with the May release of The Garfield Movie (pictured), which has earned more than US$225 million so far. 

Revenue for Sony’s Pictures segment, which includes theatrical films, TV productions and Crunchyroll, was up by 17% to US$2.3 billion this Q1 compared to the same quarter last year. 

Sony Pictures Entertainment closed its acquisition of the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema chain on June 12, so the company has high hopes for its theater/live entertainment business going forward. Alamo operates 41 US theaters that offer a dine-in cinema experience, and its loyalty program has approximately four million members. Sony sees solid potential for creating new in-theater experiences with Alamo for its IPs, games, music and anime streamer Crunchyroll (which it acquired in March 2022 for US$1.18 billion). 

The timing for exploring new opportunities for Crunchyroll is especially good, given that the platform surpassed 15 million paid subscribers in July. Additionally, Sony wants to capitalize on the growing global demand for anime brands by expanding the operational scope of its Crunchyroll Store e-commerce site to cover Europe, in addition to North America and Australia. 

Sony’s financials also highlight the video game market’s growing value. Sales stemming from its Game and Network Services division were up 12% to US$5.8 billion, thanks to its first-party titles and June’s 7% jump to 116 million monthly active users with PlayStation accounts.