• APM's Marketplace, Wednesday, October 7, 2009 10:23 AM

The recent appointment of executives adept at marketing to run Universal Pictures and Disney reflects a changing business model at Hollywood studios, Daily Variety's Cynthia Littleton tells Kai Ryssdal. "In a truly multi-platform, gazillion-channel world, it's just increasingly hard for movies to break through with the key younger audiences that they need to reach," she says.

So, the studios have to figure out a way to not only create movies that are successful at the box office but also are sustainable as brands that will succeed in television and home video and inspire spin-offs. And at least for Disney, she says, throw in "T-shirts and lunch boxes, and key chains, and perhaps even its own online realm."

Think "Wizards of Waverly Place," the Disney Channel TV Show starring singer Selena Gomez who has her own line of clothing. "Probably she'll graduate to movies at some point," says Littleton, and that's the model of the future, not the tired formula of putting Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts into a movie and watching the tickets sell.

Read the whole story at APM's Marketplace »