Longtime Sony Pictures executive Peter Schlessel is joining Santa Monica-based GK Films as president.

Schlessel served at the Culver City studio for more than two decades, most recently in the role of Sony’s president of worldwide affairs.

Appropriately, he brokered last year’s three-year, multi-film output deal with GK Films on behalf of Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group.

Schlessel was the architect of many strategic and single-picture plays at Sony and recently secured a slew of international rights from Focus Features International in Cannes to Joe Wright’s thriller Hanna.

He was also instrumental in bringing the Michael Jackson concert film This Is It! and District 9 into the Sony fold.

Sources at Sony and GK Films declined to comment on the move.