• Ad Age, Tuesday, December 20, 2005 11:45 AM

Sony Corp.'s Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group has a new marketing boss. She is Valerie Van Galder, who has been serving as president of Sony's boutique label TriStar Pictures, where she enjoyed numerous successes, including films like "The Exorcism of Emily Rose," "Underworld," "Resident Evil: Apocalypse," "Boogeyman" and "You Got Served." She replaces Geoffrey Ammer, the film marketing head who resigned last week after a string of disappointing openings including "Rent," "Zathura" and "The Legend of Zorro," and outright bombs like "Stealth," "Bewitched" and "XXX: State of the Union." Van Galder will start working on a list of high-profile films for '06, including "The Da Vinci Code" with Tom Hanks, "RV" with Robin Williams, "Click" starring Adam Sandler, and "The Pursuit of Happyness" with Will Smith. She will also continue working on several TriStar films already in the pipeline. Before heading up TriStar Pictures, Van Galder was executive vice president-marketing at Screen Gems, working on films such as "Snatch," "The Mothman Prophecies" and "The Brothers." At New Corp.'s Fox Searchlight before that, she marketed "The Full Monty," "The Ice Storm" and "The Brothers McMullen."

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