Tom Rothman launched his entertainment career as an entertainment lawyer and producer in New York representing independent voices like Spike Lee and Jim Jarmusch, “the first filmmaker ever to take a big chance on me,” he said, waxing nostalgic after a reel showcasing in his NY indie roots.
“It’s fitting here in Queens that the reel you saw leaned into the early indie days of my career. That’s as it should be tonight.” said the chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group in remarks at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens. The venerable organization honored the exec at its spring gala alongside illustrious New York native and Severance star John Turturro.
Rothman launched his studio career in the early 1990s as president of worldwide production for the Samuel Goldwyn Company in its heyday. During his tenure, the company’s pictures won the Cannes Palme D’Or three times.
“In the years since, I worked on the least expensive Hollywood movie ever made, and the most expensive. I’ve had monumental flops and the two highest grossing films in history. Of the more than 600 films I have worked on, some were forgotten in an instant, and a precious few, perhaps, I hope, will stand the test of time. But as I am still in the game, I am ever reminded of what I learned in my indie days in New York, and it’s this, and this museum is very representative of what I’m about to say, the audience does not care how much a movie cost or how it was made. They care how it makes them feel.”
Rothman joined Sony in 2013 as chairman of TriStar Pictures, rising to his current role in 2021. Along the way he launched and reignited multiple franchises including Spider-Man, Venom and Uncharted and new installments of Jumanji, Ghostbusters, Insidious, Don’t Breathe, Peter Rabbit, Zombieland, Baby Driver and Bad Boys. Directors and producers he has brought to the studio include Greta Gerwig, Quentin Tarantino, Edgar Wright, Jason Reitman, Ang Lee, Denzel Washington, David Leitch, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx and Jon Watts – who was on hand to introduce Rothman.
The helmer (Spider-Man: Homecoming) said his trepidation at first meeting the studio honcho melted quickly. “I loved him, because despite all that fear I had in that initial meeting, what I realized almost immediately was that, yeah, Tom would be on the side of the studio sometimes, of course, and then he was making sure the budget wasn’t crazy and all that, fine. But. at the heart of it, at the heart of every note or idea or decision that you made, Tom was on the side of the audience,” Watts said.
“And my favorite detail about working with Tom is that any time you’d have a screening, or you’d look at a cut, he always has popcorn … No matter what the occasion, if it’s time to watch the movie, the popcorn just appears somehow, like a door opens.”
Before Sony, Rothman spent 18 years at Fox ultimately running Fox Filmed Entertainment, and founding indie label Fox Searchlight. Films and series from his tenure are wide ranging from Titanic, Avatar and Lincoln, Life of Pi, Descendants, Cast Away, Master and Commander, Black Swan, Walk the Line, Juno and Slumdog Millionaire, to The Full Monty, The Devil Wears Prada, Borat, the X-Men series, Little Miss Sunshine, Minority Report, Moulin Rouge, Boys Don’t Cry, Sideways, the Ice Age franchise, Something About Mary, Modern Family, Glee and Homeland.
Also circulating at the event were Severance EP and star Patricia Arquette along with cast members Tramell Tillman, Jen Tullock, and Christopher Walken as well as Michael Barker co-chairman of MoMI and co-president, Sony Pictures Classics, and Michael Lynton, Snap chair and former CEO of Sony Corp. Of America.
Rosie Perez presented the award to Turturro.
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Christopher Walken and John Turturro
