I've voiced my concerns regarding Sony before on these forums before and debated whether or not to make a thread dedicated to it so thanks for kick-starting the discussion.
After thinking about it, the only area where this may affect Silver Chair is with how much they are willing to put into the marketing budget (Sony is only distributing). Are they going to hold back and play it safe or will they go all in and try to get that mass audience? That's where most of my questions lie.
Creatively, I'm feeling quite confident given what Gresham has said about working with them. I've noticed that Sony's reputation for being very controlling have stemmed from
Columbia Pictures not TriStar Pictures (who are partially financing SC) which I think is interesting. Both are owned by Sony but Tristar is a relatively new production company and they're in the midst of rebranding themselves as a home for filmmaker-driven literary films. One thing you won't see is Spiderman, Ghostbusters, or Smurfs films being developed here. Those 'mainstream' movies that are Sony's property go to Columbia division of films.
I believe it was a very intentional decision by the Lewis Estate to partner with Tristar. If this was a Columbia Picture i'd be far more concerned given that they tend to strangle the films' creative minds with different mandates.
Sorry if that last bit was a bit off topic...