SONY'S BLOCKBUSTER SEQUEL

So you have yourself a nice thriller set up, with Wolfgang Petersen directing hot off Air Force One and no less than Mel Gibson in the starring role, when--oops!--Mel decides he'd rather go elsewhere to do a pet project called Parker and then cash in on a ton of money by making Lethal Weapon IV for Warner.

Thus John Calley, the chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, lost the opportunity to trumpet a major project in the works. Such are the caprices of show biz. But for Calley the collapse of the deal is particularly irksome, since Hollywood is clamoring for action from him as he marks his first year on the job.

All this impatience strikes Calley and colleagues as hardly fair. Once pathetic Sony Pictures is flush these days, having just become one of only two studios ever to gross $1 billion in a year (Disney has done it three times). Even without a cartoon lion, Sony reached that nice, round number in record time (Aug. 31, beating Disney's best date--Nov. 23--by a stretch). And Sony expects to surpass the industry record of $1.22 billion, if it can scrape up the remainder on films such as Paul Verhoeven's sci-fi thriller Starship Troopers (a picture it's splitting with Disney), and As Good As It Gets, from Terms of Endearment director James L. Brooks.

Sony Pictures has become a cornucopia of hits: Jerry Maguire, Anaconda, My Best Friend's Wedding, Air Force One (another split with Disney) and the summer's box-office champ, Men in Black, which has grossed $243 million in the U.S. alone. Funny thing is, these hits were put together by guys who got fired a year ago, after the studio suffered through more than five money-losing years that bottomed out with Sony Corp. taking a $3.2 billion write-off--essentially admitting its investment had been worthless. Despite having ably handled the flock of pictures he inherited, Calley has yet to shepherd a film of his own devising from script to screen.

All this puts Sony Pictures in the ambiguous position of being simultaneously red-hot and not exactly. After the studio releases Zorro and Godzilla next summer, it's not clear what major projects it will have on its menu. In an industry that retains heat about as well as plastic, the cry is predictable: Show us the movies!

The anomaly raises questions in the minds of agents and their star clients, and even on Wall Street, about Tokyo's long-term plans. With revenues pouring in, Sony doesn't appear to be spending that much. Is the strategy to crank up some dazzling results and then snag a buyer? Is Calley just a caretaker? This is his second turn at the helm of a Hollywood studio; he headed Warner Brothers from 1967 to 1980. An engagingly candid, out-of-the-box thinker, Calley, 67, is nevertheless running a business that has changed drastically. Some in the industry wonder whether he has the will or the wile to stay in for the long haul.