Hollywood's Female Studio Heads

Since Sony acquired Columbia Pictures for a total of $5 billion in 1989, it had suffered losses for ten consecutive years up to the present;

If not for Sony's policy of using content to drive sales of consumer electronics, it surely would not have continued pumping money into it, and would have done the same as Panasonic in selling MCA Universal.

With founder Akio Morita's death in Tokyo, Japan, at the age of seventy-eight last month, and Nobuyuki Idei having taken on the role of CEO in addition to president last year, Norio Ohga had formally withdrawn from Sony's management structure. Now, Nobuyuki Idei had also assumed the chairmanship of the Sony Group;

The continued losses at Columbia TriStar Pictures had been a constant headache for Nobuyuki Idei. He had previously replaced Sony America head Mickey Schulhof, as well as Sony Pictures Entertainment heads Jon Peters and Peter Guber, yet there had still been no improvement.

Soon afterward, Sony America head Howard Stringer fired Columbia TriStar Pictures president Mark Canton;

Mark Canton had formerly been Warner Bros.' head of production and joined Sony in 1995. Following Mark Canton's dismissal, Sony appointed Amy Pascal, the head of production, as president of Columbia Pictures, placing her jointly in charge of Sony Pictures Entertainment alongside John Calley.

Amy Pascal's appointment made her the third woman to head a major Hollywood studio, following Paramount's Sherry Lansing and Universal's Dawn Steel!

However, the media was not very optimistic about Amy Pascal becoming chairman of Columbia TriStar Pictures;

Speculation over when Sony would fire her had directly become a hot topic in Hollywood recently...

Aspen, Colorado.

That morning, in a bedroom at the Aspen Springs Resort Hotel, the mountains and forests outside the window lay blanketed in snow, while the room itself was warm as spring,