Dolgen to Head New Columbia Picture Group

In a long-expected management move, Columbia Pictures Entertainment on Thursday named company executive Jonathan Dolgen president of its newly created Motion Picture Group.

Dolgen will oversee Columbia Pictures and Tri-Star Pictures, the studio’s two production divisions. He will report to Alan J. Levine, Columbia’s president and chief operating officer.

Dolgen, who formerly served as president of the Columbia Pictures film production unit, is expected to focus primarily on business matters in his new post. “Most of my skills are more business-oriented,” he said. At the same time, Dolgen said he expects to have a “collegial” relationship with Columbia Pictures Chairman Frank Price and Tri-Star Chairman Mike Medavoy.

“Clearly Frank and Mike run their own companies and make their own decisions,” Dolgen said. “That total autonomy which exists today will not modified in any way by this.”

Dolgen, 46, also will assist Columbia Chairman and Chief Executive Peter Guber in developing corporate strategies for the company, which was purchased by Sony Corp. for $3.4 billion in 1989. Guber, in a prepared statement, said he expected Dolgen to help Columbia become “an ever increasing force in the global marketplace.”

Dolgen rejoined Columbia in 1990, after working there earlier in his career. He previously was president of Fox Inc. and chairman of Twentieth Television, Fox’s television division.

A lawyer by training, Dolgen is known as a tough and sometimes abrasive administrator. Sources say his promotion should end the expensive management shuffle that has been ongoing at Columbia since Sony acquired the studio. Sony spent hundreds of millions of dollars to free Guber and his former co-chairman, Jon Peters, from their contract at Warner Bros.