Josh Goldstine Heading To Paramount As New Global Marketing & Distribution Boss
Motion Picture marketing czar Josh Goldstine is in final talks to come in as the new Global Head of Marketing and Distribution under Paramount‘s new Motion Picture co-chairs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, sources say. The new David Ellison run Paramount hasn’t made the news official quite yet. We had heard rumors that Goldstine had met with Ellison as far back as Oscar weekend, soon after exiting Warner Bros., but contracts couldn’t be exchanged as it was all pre-merger.
Though Greenstein has marketing in his title, since arriving at Paramount, it’s been known that the former Sony exec wants to roll up his sleeves in development. What’s new for Goldstine on the Melrose lot is that he’ll add distribution under his domain. Marc Weinstock has led Global Marketing and Distribution at Paramount since 2019, taking the studio to its highest global grossing hit, and Tom Cruise’s as well, the Skydance co-produced Top Gun: Maverick ($1.49 billion). It was just announced that Weinstock would be leaving.
Though a legacy motion picture marketing whiz, Goldstine’s superpower at Warner Bros was building campaigns for the Burbank, CA studio when they were experimenting with their distribution day-and-date experiment during Covid. He also can boast that he was behind Warner Bros’ highest grossing movie of all-time, Barbie, which made $1.44 billion worldwide. Other highs at Warners for Goldstine include Legendary fare, which coincidentally has a distribution deal at Paramount, those pics being the Dune and Monsterverse franchises, as well as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Warners shockingly showed Goldstine and International Distribution Head Andrew Cripps the door at the beginning of the year, a shocking move as in hindsight the studio had an audacious auteur driven slate including Sinners, One Battle After Another, Mickey 17, and James Gunn’s reboot of Superman. Goldstine was around back in December when the first trailer dropped for Superman which ultimately grossed $615M. Warners kept Goldstine’s lieutenants in charge of marketing, with Cripps landing as the new head of global distribution at Disney by spring.
Goldstine’s ultimate arrival at Paramount would reunite him with Paramount No. 2 Jeff Shell, who he worked with at Universal, and whose administration accused the marketing czar of “inappropriate conduct,” placing him on administrative leave in 2018. Goldstine sued Uni and won $20M in arbitration.
Goldstine couldn’t be reached for comment. Paramount had no comment.
Goldstine was head of Global marketing at Warners from 2021 until this past January. During his run at Universal from 2011-2018, he oversaw the campaigns for such movies as Jurassic World, the Despicable Me, Pitch Perfect and Fast & Furious franchises, as well as Get Out, Split, Sing, Secret Life of Pets, Straight Outta Compton and Fifty Shades of Grey. Also during his time at Uni, his team had more than 30 films reach No. 1 at the domestic box office including Snow White and the Huntsman, Ted, The Bourne Legacy, Mama, Oblivion, Fast & Furious 6, The Purge, Ride Along, Neighbors, Dumb and Dumber To and the Oscar-winning Les Misérables. Goldstine helped propel Universal to an unprecedented run at the box office, resulting in four of the five most profitable years in the company’s history. In 2015, the studio broke numerous records: the then highest-grossing domestic, international and worldwide box office of any single year in any film studio’s history; the first time any studio had three films cross $1 billion at the worldwide box office with Furious 7, Jurassic World and Illumination’s Minions; and six films opening at No. 1 at the domestic box office.
Previously, Goldstine spent over 20 years at Sony Pictures, where he held a variety of marketing positions including President of Creative Advertising. There he oversaw campaigns for The Social Network, the original Spider-Man franchise from Sam Raimi, Casino Royale, Da Vinci Code, Jerry Maguire and Groundhog Day. One of the early movie campaigns that Goldstine worked on, cutting a trailer with Francis Ford Coppola, was Bram Stoker’s Dracula starring Gary Oldman, Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder.
