A little over a week ago Sony Pictures was hacked by a group known as the Guardians Of Peace, leading to a massive outpouring of information as well as the leaking of four films that Sony has either recently released or were about to release into theaters. Just when you thought it was safe to work at Sony Pictures again, out comes a new story about negative employee feedback on one of the studios most valuable commodities: Adam Sandler movies.
Gawker found what they call, "a giant list of workplace complaints" from anonymous employees that lament the current state of the Sony Pictures' business operation. In particular, the rants target the Sony Pictures slate of films which have been very kind to Sandler's trademark schtick. At times, it gets pretty ugly. Some of the correspondences blast the actor for being formulaic and mundane and for working out a contract that's too generous, especially given the flicks don't make as much money as they once did.
To be fair, the Adam Sandler films that "bleed the studio dry" tend to rake in a lot of profit compared to the budgets they run up. If there was any sort of project that's bleeding Sony dry, it's The Amazing Spider-Man franchise and its consistently under-performing ways that have supposedly run up huger price tags than Sony would like to admit. While that franchise's latest sequel was the number 1 grossing film on Sony's roster this year, its budget is still a secret. So on the financial end, the roasting of Adam Sandler's filmography at Sony is a bit harsh. On the other hand, the artistic merits of films like Click and the Grown Ups series is a platform for fair game in roasting Adam Sandler's career, and the following quote is more attuned to that point of order.
Sony is a studio in crisis right now, and with emails like these floating around the internet, the studio is not only going to have to tighten their security, they're also going to work on their public image. While the whole Sony hack scenario has proven to be a nightmare since it started, it could provide the studio an opportunity to push for some of the past glory they've been known to experience. Maybe these leaked internal complaints can be fuel for a Sony Pictures renaissance. Or, at the very least, they'll be wise and start to make films like Grown Ups 3 on the Crackle platform, where they can join films like Joe Dirt 2.
