Tom Rothman, the former Fox CEO that oversaw the original X-Men trilogy and spin-offs, replaces Amy Pascal at Sony...
NewsHow small a club the top spots at Hollywood’s biggest studios must be: Tom Rothman is now the chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Motion Picture Group.
In what appears to be the final chapter of a corporate odyssey that is well worth a couple of future “inside baseball” bestsellers, the upheaval at Sony Pictures that became public when hackers, believed to be connected with the North Korean government, released personal emails and information of employees last November, has concluded with the rapid ascension of Tom Rothman; he has suddenly gone from head of Sony’s resurrected TriStar to head of the whole filmmaking division.
As reported by Deadline, Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Michael Lynton made the choice this morning after being spared the same fate as Amy Pascal when Sony’s Japanese owners extended his contract as SPE chairman and CEO. Pascal, conversely, has admitted that she was pushed out of her position that Rothman is now occupying. However, she remains at Sony as an executive producer, including on the upcoming untitled Marvel Studios iteration of Spider-Man.
Superhero fans may also be even more grateful that Pascal, who oversaw Sony Pictures Entertainment as chairman since 2006 (and Columbia Pictures as president and chair before that during the Raimi years) is collaborating with Kevin Feige and Disney on the next wallcrawling installment.
Indeed, Rothman by all reports is an amiable boss and in his previous position of CEO and chair at Fox Filmed Entertainment (20th Century Fox), he oversaw a healthy collaboration with filmmakers like Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge!), James Cameron (Titanic, Avatar), and Ang Lee (Life of Pi). However, he also was the corporate leader that spearheaded the previous decade of tentpole entertainment at NewsCorp's moviemaking companies.
During this time, most genre films were cut at 90 to 100-minute running times with generic scripts and product placement (including X-Men, Daredevil, X-Men: The Last Stand, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, as well as I, Robot, Alien vs. Predator, Fantastic Four, Elektra, and a number of other winners), as well as Rothman standing as the supposed lead cause for Bryan Singer to flee X-Men 3 for WB and Superman Returns. Of course, this is again just more of that aforementioned inside baseball, so at least on the Singer statistic, take it with a grain of salt. Though, personally, I still cannot believe that studio insisted on butchering Ridley Scott’s wonderful Kingdom of Heaven epic into a two-hour bloodbath in 2005…
Nevertheless, you should be excited for Rothman’s next project that he produced at TriStar, Robert Zemeckis’ very promising The Walk with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a narrative account of Philippe Petit’s walk between the Twin Towers, which was also captured in the marvelous documentary Man on Wire. Zemeckis intends to make a 3D blockbuster that refocuses the image of the beautiful 1970s World Trade Center as one of optimism, as glimpsed in the below trailer. However, this project does not include capes or cowls. And with Kevin Feige now having a say with what Sony is doing to Spider-Man, this will hopefully remain that way for Rothman and Sony Pictures’ new era.
