COMPANY TOWN : Disney Movie Marketing Chief Pula Being Replaced

Less than a year after taking the job, Chris Pula is being forced out as president of movie marketing at Disney Studios, sources said.

Disney plans to replace Pula from within its ranks, naming Oren Aviv and Geoffrey Ammer as co-heads of marketing and Heidi Trotta, who had been working on Disney’s TV side, as head of publicity.

Aviv, who has been serving as the movie studio’s head of creative advertising, will concentrate on the creative aspects of the job, and Ammer, who has worked in marketing and publicity at Disney, will oversee the administrative aspects of the department.

By late Wednesday Disney had not yet worked out a settlement with Pula’s lawyers and had made no official statement regarding his status.

Pula’s departure ends an odd-couple marriage that many in Hollywood predicted was doomed from the start.

Although Pula is highly regarded for his innovative skills as a marketer--at Disney he helped create campaigns for such hits as “The Sixth Sense,” “Tarzan” and “Inspector Gadget”--sources said his unconventional ways and often abrasive style with talent and co-workers did not mesh well with Disney’s button-down corporate culture.

“He wasn’t a team player,” said one Disney insider.

In 1997, Pula was fired as the marketing chief at Warner Bros., also after less than a year on the job, when he offended one too many filmmakers and colleagues and angered management.

When Pula was hired, his boss, Walt Disney Motion Picture Group Chairman Dick Cook, indicated that the executive’s well-known personality quirks would not be an issue as long as he did the job.

Cook declined to comment Wednesday.

Pula had been handpicked by Disney Studios Chairman Joe Roth, who had been his boss at 20th Century Fox in the early 1990s.

Many in the industry were surprised when Pula left his four-year job at New Line Cinema, a scrappy company more suited to his independent style, to work at Warner Bros. At New Line, which like Warner Bros. is owned by Time Warner, Pula was responsible for creating maverick campaigns for such big hits as “The Mask,” “Dumb and Dumber” and “Seven.”