• The Wall Street Journal, Thursday, June 5, 2008 10:30 AM

Paramount Pictures' main studio is absorbing the marketing, distribution and physical production departments at its specialty label, Paramount Vantage, signaling a further retrenchment in Hollywood for the independent-movie market. Warner Bros. recently closed two of its art-house labels and absorbed a third specialty label, New Line Cinema, into the main studio.

In recent years, Hollywood studios have been quick to establish specialty labels to take advantage of the burgeoning market for independent movies -- small, inexpensive films such as "Juno" -- that can become profitable if they achieve wide acclaim.

While Paramount Vantage has recently been involved in award-winning films -- including this year's "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" -- the label makes only six to eight pictures a year -- too few to sustain its own staff, according to Rob Moore, vice chairman of Paramount. "It made a lot more sense to utilize the organization we already have in a more efficient way," he says.

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