Sony to write down $1bn and revise profitability for film division

Entertainment company Sony has written down almost $1bn on its film studio Sony Pictures, in a dramatic revision of its profitability for the coming months.

The film business of the Japanese company boasts recent big releases such as T2 Trainspotting, but in spite of films such as struggled in 2016 to capture large audiences for its movies.

Traditional entertainment firms are suffering in comparison with companies that are more focused towards watching on-demand from home, with Netflix and other streaming services going from strength to strength as their access to high quality original content rises.

Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai attributed part of the responsibility for the writedown to "dramatic shifts in the home entertainment space currently being felt throughout the entire industry."

"Today Sony Corp. announced that a goodwill impairment charge for the pictures segment of ¥112.1bn (approximately $962m) was recorded as an operating loss in the third quarter ending 31 December 2016," Hirai said in a statement.

"The impairment charge resulted from a downward revision in the future profitability projection for the motion pictures business within the pictures segment," he added. "The downward revision was primarily due to a lowering of previous expectations regarding the home entertainment business, mainly driven by an acceleration of market decline."

Shares in Sony dropped as much as 4% after the filing was released on Monday.