Columbia marketer lands global role

Columbia TriStar has promoted the UK director of marketing for its film division, Maggie Monteith, to a global marketing role.

Monteith will become the studio’s vice-president for global strategic marketing. She will move to Los Angeles in March to take up the post.

A spokeswoman confirms the company, one of the biggest film producers in the world, has not found a successor for her.

Columbia has signed a number of initiatives with various partners.

Last April, the studio sponsored a Men In Black science fiction weekend on Channel 5, exploiting the success of the 1997 summer blockbuster. The weekend featured films such as Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Starman and documentaries, including an exclusive on the making of Men In Black.

In 1997, the studio signed a programming deal with Procter & Gamble to jointly develop daytime soap operas and nightly entertainment series.

Japan’s Sony Corporation bought the studio for 2bn in November 1989. Initially, senior personnel left the company, and a number of major releases, such as Arnold

Schwarzenegger’s Last Action Hero, flopped. Since then, things have stabilised following the release of a series of profitable films.