Hollywood studios invest in PR, while slashing marketing budgets

Hollywood studios are reining in marketing budgets — for instance, Lionsgate slashed marketing expenses by 66 percent in the third quarter — as they spend more money on public relations. “They are leaning more heavily on armies of publicists generating what they call ‘earned media,’ free coverage in magazines, newspapers, TV outlets and blogs,” Brook Barnes reported for The New York Times . Disney has even created a computer program to — ready for this — de…