Amy Pascal Hires Ian Dalrymple To Run NYC Office Of Pascal Pictures

EXCLUSIVE: While she is busy in Boston producing the Paul Feig-directed Ghostbusters, Amy Pascal and her production chief Rachel O’Connor have secured Ian Dalrymple to open and run a New York outpost for her Sony-based Pascal Pictures banner. Dalrymple has just started, joining the company after most recently serving as a creative executive at Scott Rudin Productions. He worked before that at Fox 2000, Paramount and in the lit department at WME. Pascal always was considered a book-friendly studio chief at Sony, and one of Dalrymple’s tasks will be to keep the production shingle plugged into books and magazine articles. He will report to O’Connor, who in April left her SVP post at Sony Pictures to join Pascal after working for her for 17 years.

Pascal’s first major deal after moving to the producing deal was to pre-emptively collar Maestra, a thriller novel by S.L. Knight that has been mentioned as being tonally similar to Gone Girl. Sony acquired screen rights for Pascal Pictures just after the book was bought by a UK publisher, Bonniere, and before it went on submission to U.S. publishers. Right after that deal, it became the hot title at the London Book Fair. The sexy thriller revolves around an assistant at an art auction house who sniffs out a forgery and is fired for it, then becomes enmeshed in the attempt to cash in on the fake.

“Rachel and I are thrilled to have Ian join our team,” Pascal said. “His taste is impeccable. His relationships are very strong, and his ability to shine in both the film and literary worlds is a perfect combination for us as we continue to build our new company.”

Said Dalrymple: “I have long admired Amy’s taste and willingness to take risks and couldn’t be more thrilled to join both her and Rachel in this exciting new venture.”

Pascal has gotten started with several plum projects that include producing with Marvel’s Kevin Feige the new Spider-Man series that just got Tom Holland as star and Jon Watts as director and a live-action film based on Mattel’s Barbie, which she’ll produce with Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, with Diablo Cody doing the rewrite.