Motion Pictures
April 3, 2002
Warner Bros. Pictures Adds Two Executives To Domestic Publicity Department
(April 3, 2002 – Burbank, CA) – Maggie Schmidt and Stacy Ivers have joined the publicity department of Warner Bros. Pictures as Vice Presidents of Publicity. The announcement was made today by Debbie Miller, Senior Vice President of Domestic Publicity and Promotions for Warner Bros. Pictures, and is effective immediately.
The two executives are the most recent additions to a department that has been restructured under the guidance of Miller, who was named head of the department in June, 2001, three months after joining Warner Bros. Pictures from Twentieth Century Fox, where she had been Vice President of National Publicity for nine years.
Maggie Schmidt will oversee the domestic publicity campaigns for one-third of Warner Bros. Pictures’ upcoming feature titles. As a project executive, Schmidt joins Marc Cohen, who came to the Studio from The Walt Disney Company in August, 2001, and Juli Goodwin, who moved into the project executive role when Miller was promoted to her current post.
Schmidt has most recently worked as a free-lance publicity consultant on projects including Warner Bros. Pictures’ release campaigns “A.I.” and “Cats and Dogs.” Between 1996 and 2000 she served as head of publicity at Phoenix Pictures, working in tandem with studio marketing executives on such films as “The People Vs. Larry Flynt,” “The Mirror Has Two Faces,” “Urban Legend” and “The Thin Red Line.” Prior to that time, Schmidt was Director of Program Publicity at Home Box Office, where she was responsible for publicizing titles including “Barbarians at the Gate,” “The Late Shift” and “Rebound.”
In addition, Schmidt is an accomplished playwright, whose award-winning works include “Without Reason,” “Heartaches” and “Crooks.”
Stacy Ivers will assume responsibility for trade-press and other media relations for Warner Bros. Pictures, and will also provide service in other publicity and communications functions. She rejoins the Studio after a two-year absence, during which she served as Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications for International Creative Management and as Vice President of Corporate Communications for Sony Pictures Entertainment. Prior to that time she spent more than nine years at Warner Bros. Pictures, most recently as Director of Written Communications.
Earlier in her career, Ivers worked as a political speechwriter and campaign aide, and was an account executive at several corporate agencies, including one based in New Hampshire that she co-founded.
Stated Miller, “The addition of Maggie and Stacy completes the restructuring process, which was initiated when I was brought in. They are both tremendous assets to our team, bringing expertise, creativity, leadership and outstanding industry and filmmaker relationships to their respective areas.
“I am so gratified to see how this department has come together over the past year. The campaigns we’ve turned out – from ‘Training Day’ to ‘Harry Potter’ to ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ – have been creative, effective and memorable. And now, upon receiving the ultimate honor from our peers – the Publicist Guild’s Max Weinberg Award for our campaign for ‘Harry Potter,’ I think we’ve clearly set the bar as to the level of work you can expect to see from the new Warner Bros. Pictures publicity department.”
Also recently joining the department as one of two Directors of National Publicity is David Mortimer, who came to Warner Bros. Pictures last month from Melody Kornbrot Public Relations. He and Jan Craft will each have director-level responsibility for half of Warner Bros. Pictures’ feature releases. # # #