sony

Sony Pictures Entertainment plans to lay off a few hundred employees globally in a move to restructure its business.

The cuts, announced Tuesday afternoon, are set to affect employees who work across Sony’s film, TV and corporate divisions the company said, declining to specify how many would lose their jobs.

Sony said the cuts reflect a shift in business strategy under its new chief executive, Ravi Ahuja.

“As we lean into those priorities, we need to operate with greater focus, speed, and alignment to strengthen our differentiated capabilities,” said Ahuja in a statement. “To support our growth, we are aligning our organization with where the business is going — not where it has been. That requires changes to how we are structured and where we invest.”

Ahuja, who was promoted just over a year ago, added that the company is ”reducing roles in certain areas while increasing focus and investment in others that are most critical to our future.”

Sony plans to focus on franchise strategy and brand extension with game shows, as well as develop more anime, experiences and invest in content that will connect with a younger audience. This includes more game adaptations and growing its YouTube capabilities.

One of the studio’s biggest franchises is the “Spider-Man” universe, which includes both live-action films starring actors like Tom Holland and the Oscar-winning animated “Spider-Verse” movies. The studio is set to release the latest live-action installment, “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” this summer. The previous movie “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was a major win for Sony as it generated $1.9B globally.

Sony Pictures operates under its Japanese parent company Sony Group Corp, alongside other subsidiaries like Sony Music Group and Sony Electronics. The film studio was established in 1987 and maintains a strong presence in Culver City.

Recently, the studio acquired the “Peanuts” comic in a $457-million deal, reupped the “Reading Rainbow” for a YouTube audience and is working on PlayStation adaptations for video games like “Helldivers” and “God of War.”

The company has also combined its game-show group with its nonfiction TV department and is slowing down areas of its business that have low growth, like the VFX and virtual production studio, Pixomondo.

The layoffs are the latest to hit Hollywood, which has been hard hit by the exodus of film and TV jobs to other states and countries, a cutback in the number of films being released and media consolidation. Last year, Paramount cut 10% of its workforce after it was acquired by David Ellison’s Skydance Media.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court made it harder for music and movie makers to sue for online piracy, ruling Wednesday that internet providers are usually not liable for copyright infringement even if they know their users are downloading copyrighted works.

In a 9-0 decision, the justices threw out Sony’s lawsuit and a $1-billion verdict against Cox Cable for copyright infringement.

Lower courts upheld a jury’s verdict against Cox’s internet service for contributing to music piracy, which the company did little to stop.

Sony’s lawyers pointed to hundreds of thousands of instances of Cox customers sharing copyrighted works. Put on notice, Cox did little stop it, they said.

But the high court said that is not enough to establish liability for copyright infringement.

“Under our precedents, a company is not liable as a copyright infringer for merely providing a service to the general public with knowledge that it will be used by some to infringe copyrights,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court.

Two decades ago, the court sided with the music and motion picture producers and ruled against Grokster and Napster on the grounds their software was intended to share copyrighted music and movies.

But on Wednesday, the court said “contributory” copyright infringement did not extend to internet service providers based on the actions of some of their users

“Cox provided Internet service to its subscribers, but it did not intend for that service to be used to commit copyright infringement,” Thomas said. “Cox neither induced its users’ infringement nor provided a service tailored to infringement.”

In its defense, Cox argued that internet service providers could be bankrupted by huge lawsuits for copyright infringement, which they said they did not cause and could not prevent.