The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has named its new President, Sid Ganis has been elected to the post at Tuesday night's board meeting.

Sid Ganis established Out of the Blue...Entertainment on the Sony Pictures lot in late '96 as a provider of motion picture, television and musical entertainment for Columbia, TriStar and others. On the creative side, Ganis was formerly president of Paramount Pictures' Motion Picture Group for several years before joining Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Ganis has held various positions at Sony, and was named President of Worldwide Marketing for the Columbia/TriStar Motion picture companies in August 1994. From March to August 1994, Mr. Ganis was vice chairman of Columbia Pictures. Prior to that, he was president of Columbia's marketing and distribution and executive vice president of Columbia Pictures, positions he had held since August 1992.

While at Columbia, he developed successful and innovative marketing campaigns for a string of hits, beginning with Penny Marshall's A League Of Their Own and including Mo'Money ; Single White Female, Robert Redford's critically acclaimed A River Runs Through It ; Francis Ford Coppola's worldwide blockbuster Bram Stoker's Dracula, which achieved the biggest opening weekend in Columbia's 70 year history; Rob Reiner's A Few Good Men, the Company's biggest hit of 1992; Groundhog Day; In The Line Of Fire, starring Clint Eastwood; Martin Scorsese's The Age Of Innocence; Merchant / lvory's Remains Of The Day, starring Academy Award-winners Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson; and Mike Nichols' Wolf, starring Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Mr. Ganis joined SPE as executive vice president in January 1991, developing and implementing corporate strategies to distinguish the Company in the global marketplace.

Before joining SPE, Mr. Ganis served for five years as president of the Motion Picture Group at Paramount Pictures and president of Worldwide Marketing. While at Paramount, Mr. Ganis was responsible for green-lighting Ghost, the number-one box office hit of 1990 which grossed $500 million worldwide, and purchasing the underlying rights to Forrest Gump. As the head of Worldwide Marketing he helped launch such Paramount blockbusters as Top Gun, Fatal Attraction, Crocodile Dundee and Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade.

Previously, Mr. Ganis was senior vice president of Lucasfilm Ltd., where he worked closely with George Lucas on production and marketing of all motion picture product.

Mr. Ganis was previously to his new AMPA position First Vice President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences as well as a member of the Board of Governors representing the public relations branch of the Academy. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Center Theatre Group and the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archives.