Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. - SPE for short (formerly known as Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc.), a subsidiary of the Japanese Sony Group, is an American multinational conglomerate of mass media and entertainment studios that produces, acquires and distributes entertainment films (theatrical films, television programs and recorded videos) via various platforms. The company is one of the so-called major studios.

The development of the company was significantly influenced by the predecessor companies Columbia Pictures and Tri-Star Pictures (The Coca-Cola Company). The unsteady course of business in the 1980s increasingly unsettled the parent company's investors, who then outsourced the film business to a subsidiary. By outsourcing and merging the two studios, Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc. was created in 1987, the direct predecessor of SPE.

Sony Corporation of America (SCA) took over the film and television companies of The Coca-Cola Company in 1989 and initially continued to run Columbia and Tri-Star as separate companies. Sony Pictures Entertainment was born in 1991.

Columbia Pictures, the oldest formerly independent company, makes up the core of Sony Pictures. All mainstream films produced in-house are marketed under the Columbia label. Until 2004, “Columbia Pictures” was the dominant name for the entire company in the United States. In 2004, the old names (outside the United States mostly Columbia TriStar Films) were replaced worldwide by Sony Pictures.

The company expanded its operations on April 8, 2005, when a Sony-led consortium acquired the legendary Hollywood studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in a leveraged buyout of $4.8 billion by the holding company MGM Holdings Inc.

Originally the headquarters of MGM Studios, an eight-story, 260,000-square-foot building became known as Sony Pictures Plaza. It was sold in 2014 for 159 million dollars. The company has been headquartered in Culver City, California since 1998.

In April 2021, Sony signed a first-look deal with Netflix, allowing the streaming service to host their films following their theatrical runs and home media releases. That same month, the company also entered into a multi-year licensing agreement with The Walt Disney Company for its films to stream across Disney's streaming and linear platforms, including Disney+ and Hulu. (Source: Wikipedia)