New TriStar President

Sony Pictures Entertainment, in a move it said would strengthen its TriStar Pictures unit, named Mark Platt president of the company and Stacey Snider president of production.

At TriStar, Platt rejoins Chairman Mike Medavoy, with whom he had worked at Orion Pictures. When Medavoy left for TriStar two years ago, Platt succeeded him as president of Orion Pictures Productions.

Medavoy said the new executives “provide us with the best one-two punch in the business.”

Working with Medavoy at Orion, Platt was responsible for the development and production of such films as “Silence of the Lambs” and “Mermaids.” As president, he oversaw “Little Man Tate,” “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” and “The Addams Family,” which was subsequently sold to Paramount Pictures.

Orion’s recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy court filing brought film production to a halt. Platt said that although he “certainly wanted to be productive in films again,” the TriStar job “is the kind of offer I’d have considered regardless of the situation at Orion.”

Snider for the past two years has been executive vice president of GPEC, the Sony production unit founded by studio executives Jon Peters and Peter Guber. Her work involved negotiating rights to literary properties, developing talent relationships and supervising production of several movies.