Sony Pictures Entertainment is likely to choose a successor to Amy Pascal from within the studio, and may change the company’s senior reporting structure before doing so, an individual with knowledge of the company told TheWrap on Thursday.
Pascal resigned from her position as co-chairman of the studio and chairman of the Motion Picture Group on Thursday, two months after a crippling computer hack brought the studio to a standstill and the leak of her entire email inbox led to embarrassing disclosures.
“We are pretty sure we have the bench strength internally to fill the appropriate slots,” a Sony executive told TheWrap. CEO Michael Lynton needs “to understand how the studio should be organized and what we have here. There are lots of different models — the Disney model, the way [Warner CEO] Kevin Tsujihara has set WB up — Paramount, Fox — they’re all slightly different.”
An altered structure could mean the various divisions at Sony reporting into Lynton, including Columbia Pictures, Tristar, Sony Pictures Classics and Sony Pictures Television. Disney’s various divisions like Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar run their own production while reporting into chairman Alan Horn. At Warner, a triumvirate structure of international marketing and distibution, production and New Line report into Tsujihara.
The executives who would be likely successors to Pascal from within the company would be Tristar chief Tom Rothman, Columbia Pictures president of production Michael DeLuca, Sony Television chief Steve Mosko or Doug Belgrad, president of the Motion Picture Group.