Sara Risher has a thing for “chick flicks” but in the best possible sense.

In fact, the 25-year Hollywood veteran just founded her own production division under the New Line Cinema umbrella with that very name to make movies targeting female audiences.

“For years, the term ‘chick flick’ was used in a disparaging way,” Risher said. “But look at the movies that are popular “Notting Hill,” “Stepmom” they all have good strong characters. It’s a niche that’s very lucrative. And film is not just an art, it’s a business.”

Risher has learned over her years in the business how to successfully target a specific segment of the audience. As head of production at New Line, she has been behind such cult hits as five of seven movies in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series, Divine’s glam-trash film “Polyester” and Christian Slater’s teen-angst opus “Pump Up the Volume.”

Now she believes there’s a huge market for films featuring complex relationships, crisp dialogue and a hint of romance. This year’s box-office numbers would seem to indicate as much.

“Notting Hill” is expected to wind up with $115 million in receipts, “Runaway Bride” had earned $74 million in its second week of release, and “You’ve Got Mail,” the story of an e-mail courtship starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, collected $115.8 million.

“More women are seeing movies, and anything that is meant to appeal to them is almost guaranteed to be a success,” said Robert Bucksbaum, president of Reel Source Inc., which charts box-office results.

That’s a big change from five years ago, when action-adventure, shoot-’em-up and end-of-the-world films were the mainstays.

Risher, 50, plans to produce films that give meatier rolls to women of all ages and stages, from Kate Winslet to Susan Sarandon and Judi Dench. “One of my goals with Chick Flicks is to help these women make projects that are their pet projects,” she said.

Risher also wants to produce family films to bring women into movie theaters. But she intends to steer clear of cloying, sugary plots.

Among the first projects is a family comedy based on the 1960s sitcom “My Three Sons.” Risher said it will star and be produced by Michael Douglas not normally identified for family roles.

It’s all a far cry from the slasher flicks that Risher produced earlier in her career. In 1984, the New Line film “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was turning into, well, a nightmare. Risher, six months pregnant at the time, called for a meeting of the entire cast and crew.

“I said, ‘We don’t have the money to pay you this week, and we may not have the money to pay you next week. But stick with us, and we’ll get it done,’ ” she recalls.

No one left the movie, which eventually introduced the world to razor-nailed psycho Freddy Krueger and teen dream Johnny Depp. It went on to earn $25.5 million, inspired a successful franchise of six sequels, and jump-started Risher’s career.

After her son Nicholas was born, Risher was frequently seen carrying him around movie sets a scene not so commonplace at the time. In fact, though Risher is reluctant to admit it, her tenacity as a single mom and hotshot producer might make a compelling script.

“People sometimes say I was a forerunner a liberated woman,” she said. “The truth is, I didn’t have a choice. I had to work. I had to be a mom. There was no way I could do one over the other. In retrospect, there were times when I didn’t do it as well as I should have. Both my job and my child suffered periodically.”

But Hollywood is no longer exclusively run by male studio bosses. Risher believes women have made a dent in the system over the past few years a significant factor in her decision to start Chick Flicks.

“The main difference now is that there are a lot of female directors and producers,” Risher said. “Women have always held the creative positions in Hollywood the writers, the actresses. Now we’re seeing women in executive positions.”