Executive Is Ousted at Sony Pictures

Sony Pictures Entertainment, suffering a prolonged box-office slump with such costly misses as “Zathura,” “Stealth” and “Bewitched,” has ousted Geoffrey Ammer, its president of marketing.

In a statement released late Monday, the studio acknowledged that Ammer was stepping down and that a successor would be named shortly. Industry sources speculated that Valerie Van Galder, who is president of Sony’s recently revived TriStar Pictures movie label, would replace Ammer.

Ammer, who for the last four years had served as president of worldwide marketing for Sony’s Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, will continue to oversee the studio’s marketing campaigns on the upcoming holiday releases “Fun With Dick and Jane” and “Memoirs of a Geisha.”

It is common practice in Hollywood to blame marketing chiefs when a studio’s movies flop even though they aren’t the ones who choose which projects get made. That responsibility rests with a studio’s top creative executive.

In Sony’s case, that would be movie chief Amy Pascal, who in a recent interview with The Times acknowledged the studio’s box-office troubles.

“Nobody wants to be where we are today,” Pascal said. “And we’ve got to figure out how it happened.”

Pascal and Sony Pictures Chairman Michael Lynton, both of whom report to Sony Corp. Chief Executive Howard Stringer, were traveling Monday and unavailable for comment.

Pascal and Lynton are under pressure to take a harder look at their decision-making process, including what movies get made and at what price. The two have said Sony now plans to make fewer movies and is looking for more outside investors to help minimize the studio’s risk on its pictures.

Many of Sony’s high-profile movies cost more than $100 million. However, the studio’s comedy hit, “Hitch,” released in February, was the only film to gross more than $100 million domestically since last year’s fall release of “The Grudge.” Among Sony’s other flops this year were “XXX: State of the Union” and “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo.”

During his tenure, Ammer, also oversaw some of the studio’s biggest hits, among them two “Spider-Man” blockbusters.

He will serve as a marketing consultant to Sony through 2006.