Sony Pictures Moving Into Family Market

Sony Pictures Entertainment is making a major push into the family market, creating a new division to produce home videos, TV shows, animated films and merchandising. The division’s president will be Sander Schwartz, who currently heads Sony’s Columbia TriStar children’s television division. The new unit could release its first animated feature next year, officials said. No films have been given the green light, but Sander said he will look for “cost-effective and lower-risk” properties that can be spun off for the children’s home video, TV and consumer products markets. He said Sony’s animated films would be closer in scope to Paramount’s modestly budgeted “The Rugrats Movie”--a big-screen spinoff of the hit Nickelodeon cable show--than the expensive animated musicals from Disney or DreamWorks. Live-action family films will be developed and produced by Sony’s Columbia Pictures.