NEW YORK (AP) – Over a January weekend in 2010, Amy Pascal made one of the most audacious decisions of her long tenure as Sony Pictures Entertainment co-chair, a nine-year run that has come to a tumultuous end.
When “Spider-Man” director Sam Raimi voiced his unhappiness with plans for a fourth installment of the $2.5 billion franchise Pascal had shepherded, she abruptly changed course, ordering up one of the fastest reboots in blockbuster history.
“I wasn’t troubled by it,” Pascal matter-of-factly said at the time. “The Amazing Spider-Man,” with Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, would hit theaters less than five years after “Spider-Man 3.”
The episode epitomized Pascal’s boldness, a trait that served her well as the most powerful female executive force in the industry, a studio head widely respected for championing women filmmakers (like Norah Ephron and Nancy Meyers), producing ambitious awards-winners (“The Social Network”), churning out sharp comedies (“21 Jump Street”) and creating some major blockbusters (“Skyfall”).
But that same daring also contributed to her undoing. “The Interview,” the film that provoked the North Korean hacking attack that precipitate Pascal’s departure, was the kind of adventurous, star-driven film she loved to make, the kind other, less colorful executives would have surely balked at.