Amy Pascal

It's never an easy decision when a studio head has to pull the plug on a big movie, as Amy Pascal did last week when she shut down "Moneyball," a $58-million Steven Soderbergh film that was set to star Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the maverick general manager of the Oakland A's who almost single-handedly reinvented the way baseball scouts and develops young talent. The movie, based on the bestselling book by Michael Lewis, wasn't just in preproduction.

In a move that surprised Hollywood, Columbia Pictures' long-running tag team of production heads Doug Belgrad and Matt Tolmach is breaking up. Tolmach, who has served as co-president of Sony Pictures' Columbia label for the last eight years, is moving on to become a producer at the studio while Belgrad stays as sole president. Since they were named to their posts in 2002, the pair have been heavily promoted to the creative community and media as equals and Sony Pictures co-Chairman Amy Pascal's top production lieutenants.

Sony Pictures Entertainment movie chief Amy Pascal is being rewarded for her contributions with a bigger title and a longer contract. Pascal on Wednesday was named co-chair, signing a deal aimed at keeping her on the studio's Culver City lot until 2011. The moves follow a turnaround this year for Sony that included such hits as "The Da Vinci Code," starring Tom Hanks, the Will Ferrell comedy "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" and the Adam Sandler film "Click."

It's never an easy decision when a studio head has to pull the plug on a big movie, as Amy Pascal did last week when she shut down "Moneyball," a $58-million Steven Soderbergh film that was set to star Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the maverick general manager of the Oakland A's who almost single-handedly reinvented the way baseball scouts and develops young talent. The movie, based on the bestselling book by Michael Lewis, wasn't just in preproduction.

Drawing crowds: The Tribeca Film Festival announced a total attendance of just less than 400,000 at this year's festival. Event organizers estimated a ticketed attendance of more than 155,000 to 700 screenings and 14 panel discussions throughout the festival, which ran April 23 through May 4. -- Good deeds: The Simon Wiesenthal Center is honoring Amy Pascal, co-chair of Sony Pictures Entertainment and chairwoman of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion...

RE "Hurry. Somebody Call Spider-Man," by John Horn, Nov. 14: Every movie genre has a simple formula. The good movies exploit that formula over and over, and the great ones add subtle twists. For the most part, the movies that did well for Sony had solid stories. It's almost inconceivable to me, as a produced screenwriter, that Sony executive Amy Pascal could possibly look at "Deuce Bigelow" or "Stealth" and declare, "It's always in the end about good stories and telling them well." I laughed harder at that quote than at anything I've seen in a Sony release all year.

Some of them you know. Some you don't. But the following artists, entertainers and executives have one thing in common: We're counting on each to mae a significant impact or difference in their respective fields this year. Sure, there will be thers who make a splash, but after we talked with dozens of people who work in entertainment and the arts, these were the names mentioned most often. You might say that Jim Carrey was a face to watch in '94, and you would be right.

In a long-rumored move, Turner Pictures Worldwide named Amy Pascal president of production Wednesday. Pascal, a former executive vice president of production at Columbia Pictures, is to produce up to eight theatrical features a year under the Turner Pictures banner by 1998. Media mogul Ted Turner is ramping up production as part of a broad Hollywood expansion.

Amy Pascal has been promoted to chairwoman of Columbia Pictures after having served as president of the Sony-owned studio for the last three years. Pascal becomes the third woman in Hollywood to hold that title in the movie industry, along with Paramount Pictures chief Sherry Lansing and Universal Pictures' Stacey Snider. Unlike Lansing and Snider, however, Pascal, 41, does not oversee marketing and distribution.

At a time when expensive adult dramas keep striking out at the box office, it appears not even Brad Pitt and director Steven Soderbergh can entice a Hollywood studio to spend about $57 million on a baseball movie. Sony Pictures has stopped production on "Moneyball," an adaptation of Michael Lewis' 2003 bestseller of the same name about the revival of the Oakland A's, which was to be directed by Soderbergh and star Pitt.

Drawing crowds: The Tribeca Film Festival announced a total attendance of just less than 400,000 at this year's festival. Event organizers estimated a ticketed attendance of more than 155,000 to 700 screenings and 14 panel discussions throughout the festival, which ran April 23 through May 4. -- Good deeds: The Simon Wiesenthal Center is honoring Amy Pascal, co-chair of Sony Pictures Entertainment and chairwoman of Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion...

Sony Pictures Entertainment movie chief Amy Pascal is being rewarded for her contributions with a bigger title and a longer contract. Pascal on Wednesday was named co-chair, signing a deal aimed at keeping her on the studio's Culver City lot until 2011. The moves follow a turnaround this year for Sony that included such hits as "The Da Vinci Code," starring Tom Hanks, the Will Ferrell comedy "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby" and the Adam Sandler film "Click."

For as long as Hollywood has made movies, its relationship with the truth has been as shaky as a hand-held camera. Actors -- and legions of others in the industry -- lie about their age; producers fudge the real costs of making movies; studio executives distort box-office grosses. One movie producer titled her memoir "Hello, He Lied." But can Hollywood handle the truth?

RE "Hurry. Somebody Call Spider-Man," by John Horn, Nov. 14: Every movie genre has a simple formula. The good movies exploit that formula over and over, and the great ones add subtle twists. For the most part, the movies that did well for Sony had solid stories. It's almost inconceivable to me, as a produced screenwriter, that Sony executive Amy Pascal could possibly look at "Deuce Bigelow" or "Stealth" and declare, "It's always in the end about good stories and telling them well." I laughed harder at that quote than at anything I've seen in a Sony release all year.

After delivering her first full-blown business presentation to corporate bosses in New York two weeks ago, Sony Pictures Entertainment Vice Chairwoman Amy Pascal received an unexpected response: a hug from Sony Corp.'s normally reserved chairman, Nobuyuki Idei.

Sony Pictures Entertainment on Sunday took another step toward overhauling its management by naming former Turner Pictures executive Amy Pascal to head its troubled Columbia Pictures division. The move, the latest in series of appointments by Sony, brings Pascal back to Columbia, where she worked for seven years before joining Turner Pictures in 1994.

In the grand tradition of old Hollywood, the limousines lined up by the dozen Sunday night at the historic Mann's Chinese Theatre for the premiere of "Charlie's Angels." "Angels" co-star Cameron Diaz stepped out onto the red carpet in red-mesh stockings and a head-turning black micro-mini dress, joining a parade of hip young stars, agents and gadflies who made Columbia Pictures' premiere the go-to event.

In the grand tradition of old Hollywood, the limousines lined up by the dozen Sunday night at the historic Mann's Chinese Theatre for the premiere of "Charlie's Angels." "Angels" co-star Cameron Diaz stepped out onto the red carpet in red-mesh stockings and a head-turning black micro-mini dress, joining a parade of hip young stars, agents and gadflies who made Columbia Pictures' premiere the go-to event.

Amy Pascal has been promoted to chairwoman of Columbia Pictures after having served as president of the Sony-owned studio for the last three years. Pascal becomes the third woman in Hollywood to hold that title in the movie industry, along with Paramount Pictures chief Sherry Lansing and Universal Pictures' Stacey Snider. Unlike Lansing and Snider, however, Pascal, 41, does not oversee marketing and distribution.