Amy Pascal Will Step Down From Sony Pictures Top Job

Sony announced Thursday morning that Amy Pascal will step down from the top job in its movies division.

The company announced Pascal will transition from her role as co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment and chairman of the company’s motion picture group to instead “launch a major new production venture at the studio” beginning in May 2015, Deadline reports. She will also be a producer on the new Ghostbusters film and future Amazing Spider-Man movies, according to the Hollywood Reporter (THR).

“I have spent almost my entire professional life at Sony Pictures and I am energized to be starting this new chapter based at the company I call home,” Pascal said in a statement.

Pascal has been with Sony since 1988. One of her biggest boons for the company was leading the Spider-Man franchise, which at nearly $4 billion is the highest-grossing superhero franchise in Hollywood, and under her leadership, Sony Pictures had 95 movies that hit No. 1 at the domestic box office, more than any other studio, reports THR.

It’s unclear who will succeed her, but Pascal’s departure from the role was likely hastened by embarrassing revelations from the Sony hack in December, a massive cybersecurity breach in the company that leaked thousands of documents online. Among the documents exposed by the attack were emails between Pascal and Scott Rudin making racial jokes about Barack Obama.

In a Vanity Fair article on the Sony hack published online Wednesday, writer Mark Seal reported that Pascal “does not act as if she’s going anyplace anytime soon. She is excited to be developing Ghostbusters 3, an all-female version of the 1984 hit comedy, which she feels will become the studio’s first female franchise.”

Read more: Who Is Amy Pascal? Meet the Exec Tangled Up in Sony’s Leaked Emails