20th Century Studios

History

From founding to 1956

Twentieth Century Pictures' Joseph Schenck and Darryl F. Zanuck left United Artists over a stock dispute and began merger talks with the management of financially struggling Fox Film under President Sidney Kent.

Spyros Skouras, then manager of the Fox West Coast Theaters, helped make it happen (and later became president of the new company). The company had been struggling since founder William Fox lost control of it in 1930.

Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures merged in 1935. Initially it was speculated in The New York Times that the newly merged company would be named Fox-Twentieth Century. The new company, Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, began trading on May 31, 1935. Kent remained at the company, joining Schenck and Zanuck. Zanuck replaced Winfield Sheehan as the company's production chief.

The company established a special training school. Lynn Bari, Patricia Farr, and Anne Nagel were among 14 young women "launched on the trail of film stardom" on August 6, 1935, when they each received a six-month contract with Twentieth Century-Fox after spending 18 months in the school. The contracts included a studio option for renewal for as long as seven years.

For many years Twentieth Century-Fox identified itself as having been founded in 1915, which was the year that Fox Film was founded. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary. However, in recent years it has considered the 1935 merger as its founding date, even though most film historians agree it was launched in 1915 with the founding of Fox Film. The company's films retained the Twentieth Century Pictures searchlight logo and fanfare in the opening credits but with the name changed to Twentieth Century-Fox.

After the merger was completed, Zanuck signed young actors to help carry Twentieth Century-Fox: Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Carmen Miranda, Don Ameche, Henry Fonda, Gene Tierney, Sonja Henie, and Betty Grable. Twentieth Century-Fox also hired Alice Faye and Shirley Temple, who appeared in several major films for the studio in the 1930s.

Higher movie attendance during World War II helped Twentieth Century-Fox overtake RKO and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to become the third most profitable film studio. In 1941 Zanuck was commissioned as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Signal Corps and assigned to supervise the production of U.S. Army training films. His partner William Goetz filled in at the Twentieth Century-Fox office while he was away.

Production and financial problems

Zanuck's successor, producer Buddy Adler, died a year later. President Spyros Skouras brought in a series of production executives, but none had Zanuck's success. By the early 1960s, Twentieth Century-Fox was in trouble. A new version of Cleopatra (1963) began production in 1959 with Joan Collins in the lead. As a publicity gimmick, producer Walter Wanger offered $1 million to Elizabeth Taylor if she would star; she accepted and costs for Cleopatra began to escalate. Richard Burton's on-set romance with Taylor was surrounding the media. However, Skouras' selfish preferences and inexperienced micromanagement on the film's production did nothing to speed up production on Cleopatra.

Meanwhile, another remake—of the Cary Grant hit My Favorite Wife (1940)—was rushed into production in an attempt to turn over a quick profit to help keep Twentieth Century-Fox afloat. The romantic comedy entitled Something's Got to Give paired Marilyn Monroe, Twentieth Century-Fox's most bankable star of the 1950s, with Dean Martin and director George Cukor. The troubled Monroe caused delays daily, and it quickly descended into a costly debacle. As Cleopatra's budget passed $10 million, eventually costing around $40 million, Twentieth Century-Fox sold its back lot (now the site of Century City) to Alcoa in 1961 to raise funds. After several weeks of script rewrites on the Monroe picture and very little progress, mostly due to director George Cukor's filming methods, in addition to Monroe's chronic sinusitis, Monroe was fired from Something's Got to Give and two months later she was found dead. According to Twentieth Century-Fox files, she was rehired within weeks for a two-picture deal totaling $1 million, $500,000 to finish Something's Got to Give (plus a bonus at completion), and another $500,000 for What a Way to Go. Elizabeth Taylor's disruptive reign on the Cleopatra set continued unchallenged from 1960 into 1962, though three Twentieth Century-Fox executives went to Rome in June 1962 to fire her. They learned that director Joseph L. Mankiewicz had filmed out of sequence and had only done interiors, so Twentieth Century-Fox was then forced to allow Taylor several more weeks of filming. In the meantime during that summer of 1962 Fox released nearly all of its contract stars to offset burgeoning costs, including Jayne Mansfield.

With few pictures on the schedule, Skouras wanted to rush Zanuck's big-budget war epic The Longest Day (1962), an accurate account of the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, with a huge international cast, into release as another source of quick cash. This offended Zanuck, still Twentieth Century-Fox's largest shareholder, for whom The Longest Day was a labor of love that he had dearly wanted to produce for many years. After it became clear that Something's Got to Give would not be able to progress without Monroe in the lead (Martin had refused to work with anyone else), Skouras finally decided that re-signing her was unavoidable. But days before filming was due to resume, she was found dead at her Los Angeles home and the picture resumed filming as Move Over, Darling, with Doris Day and James Garner in the leads. Released in 1963, the film was a hit. The unfinished scenes from Something's Got to Give were shelved for nearly 40 years. Rather than being rushed into release as if it were a B-picture, The Longest Day was lovingly and carefully produced under Zanuck's supervision. It was finally released at a length of three hours and was well received.

Marvin Davis and Rupert Murdoch

With financial stability came new owners, when 20th Century-Fox was sold for $720 million on June 8, 1981, to investors Marc Rich and Marvin Davis. 20th Century-Fox's assets included Pebble Beach Golf Links, the Aspen Skiing Company and a Century City property upon which Davis built and twice sold Fox Plaza.

In 1982, the company decided to try on capitalizing the video game industry by forming the company's first video game division, Fox Video Games, in order to sell cartridges for consoles and computers, under the "Games of the Century" slogan, but the division failed due to the video game crash of 1983.

By 1984, Rich had become a fugitive from justice, having fled to Switzerland after being charged by U.S. federal prosecutors with tax evasion, racketeering and illegal trading with Iran during the Iran hostage crisis. Rich's assets were frozen by U.S. authorities. In 1984, Marvin Davis bought out Marc Rich's 50% interest in 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation for an undisclosed amount, reported to be $116 million. In late 1983 and 1984, Australian businessman Rupert Murdoch made an unsuccessful attempt at acquiring Warner Communications, which included film studio Warner Bros. Pictures and other assets such as Warner Music Group. After failing to acquire Warner Communications through his company News Corporation, Murdoch shifted his attention to acquiring another film studio in Twentieth Century-Fox. Davis sold the 50% stake in Twentieth Century-Fox to News Corporation for $250 million in March 1985. Davis later backed out of a deal with Murdoch to purchase John Kluge's Metromedia television stations. Murdoch went ahead alone and bought the stations, and later bought out Davis' remaining stake in Twentieth Century-Fox for $325 million. From 1985, the hyphen was permanently deleted from the brand name, with Twentieth Century-Fox changing to Twentieth Century Fox.

To gain FCC approval of 20th Century-Fox's purchase of Metromedia's television holdings, once the stations of the long-dissolved DuMont network, Murdoch had to become a U.S. citizen. He did so in 1985, and in 1986 the new Fox Broadcasting Company took to the air. The network's visual imagery has often incorporated the searchlights of 20th Century Fox's logo. Over the next 20-odd years the network and owned-stations group expanded to become extremely profitable for News Corporation. Between the 1980s and 2010s, it aired in-house programming produced by 20th Century Fox's television studios (such as Family Guy, The Simpsons and The X-Files), as well as outside content from other studios (such as Beverly Hills 90210, Married... with Children and The O.C.). In October 1993, 20th Century Fox bought the rights to the Marvel Comics characters X-Men, while the Marvel characters the Fantastic Four were bought in 1998. During the 1990s, Marvel sold off the rest of their characters to other studios, and these studios had a clause in their contracts which would allow the characters rights to revert to Marvel if they failed to produce new films every few years. An animated series based on the X-Men had already begun airing on the Fox network in 1992, prior to 20th Century Fox acquiring the film rights the following year. In 2000, Bryan Singer directed the first film and the second film, while Brett Ratner was hired to direct the third film of the original trilogy. In 1994, News Corporation launched FX, which evolved into a premium cable network utilizing Fox's television production capabilities. That year, it also co-founded Foxtel, which went on to become Australia's main pay television provider. In 1996, News Corporation launched the popular cable news channel Fox News. All three of these entities initially used logos which were inspired by 20th Century Fox's searchlight logo design. Beginning in the mid-1990s, News Corporation also utilized the 20th Century Fox brand when launching various cable sports channels around the world, with these channels being branded Fox Sports channels.

21st Century Fox era

On June 28, 2012, Rupert Murdoch announced that News Corporation would be split into two publishing and media-oriented companies: a new News Corporation and 21st Century Fox, which operated the Fox Entertainment Group and 20th Century Fox. Murdoch considered the name of the new company a way to maintain the 20th Century Fox heritage.

On August 20, 2012, 20th Century Fox entered a five-year distribution agreement with DreamWorks Animation, which began in 2013, after their distribution deal with Paramount Pictures ended with the 2012 release of Rise of the Guardians. DreamWorks Animation's first film to be distributed under the new agreement was The Croods.

Fox Stage Productions was formed in June 2013. In August, the same year, 20th Century Fox started a theatrical joint venture with a trio of producers, both film and theater, Kevin McCollum, John Davis and Tom McGrath.

In June 2014, Rupert Murdoch made a $80 billion bid to acquire Time Warner, 30 years after his original failed bid for its predecessor Warner Communications, which led to him instead acquiring Fox. The planned 2014 acquisition would have merged Warner Bros. Pictures and other assets such as HBO with the assets of 21st Century Fox, in order to achieve greater scale. The bid was rejected by Time Warner's board since they believed it undervalued the company, and by August 2014 Murdoch walked away from the deal.

On September 20, 2017, Locksmith Animation formed a multi-year production deal with 20th Century Fox, who would distribute Locksmith's films under 20th Century Fox Animation, with Locksmith aiming to release a film every 12–18 months. The deal was to bolster Blue Sky's output and replace the loss of distributing DreamWorks Animation films, which are now owned and distributed by Universal Pictures, following its acquisition by NBCUniversal in 2016, after their distribution deal with 20th Century Fox ended with the release of Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie. The first film to be released under the production company was Ron's Gone Wrong, which was released on October 22, 2021, by 20th Century Studios and was the only film to be released by the studio.

Technoprops, a VFX company that worked on Avatar and The Jungle Book, was purchased in April 2017 to operate as Fox VFX Lab. Technoprops' founder Glenn Derry would continue to run the company as vice president of visual effect reporting to Gerard Bevan and John Kilkenny, VFX president.

Disney era

On December 14, 2017, Disney announced plans to purchase most of 21st Century Fox, including 20th Century Fox, for $52.4 billion in an all-stock deal. Disney had originally intended to acquire Time Warner rather than 21st Century Fox, but when they reached out to Time Warner in October 2016, they found out that it already had a deal in place with telecommunications company AT&T.

In June 2018, Comcast (owner of NBCUniversal) made an all-cash $65 billion bid for 21st Century Fox. Disney counterbid with $71.3 billion in both stock and cash. On July 19, 2018, Comcast dropped out of the bid for 21st Century Fox in favor of Sky plc and Sky UK. Eight days later, Disney and 21st Century Fox shareholders approved the merger between the two companies. Although the deal was completed on March 20, 2019, 20th Century Fox was not planning to relocate to Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, but retained its headquarters in Century City on the Fox Studio Lot, which leased to Disney by 21st Century Fox's successor, Fox Corporation, for seven years. Various units were moved out from under 20th Century Fox at acquisition in months after the merger along with several rounds of layoffs. The Fox Research Library was folded into the Walt Disney Archives and Walt Disney Imagineering Archives in January 2020. The last film to use the "20th Century Fox" name was Underwater, which was released on January 10, 2020.

After the box office failures of films like Dark Phoenix and Stuber, Disney halted development on several projects, though films such as Free Guy and the Avatar sequels managed to continue production. Fox's slate would be reduced to 10 films per year, half of them being made for the Hulu and then-upcoming Disney+ streaming services. Projects from 20th Century Fox franchises such as Home Alone, Cheaper by the Dozen, Night at the Museum, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and Ice Age were later announced for Disney+. These projects would later be fully revealed during Disney's Investor Day in December 2020 as feature films for the aforementioned streaming service. The first of these projects was Home Sweet Home Alone, which was released on November 12, 2021.

On January 17, 2020, Disney renamed the studio to "20th Century Studios", which served to help avoid brand confusion with Fox Corporation. Similar to other Disney film units, distribution of 20th Century Studios films is now handled in North America by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures and internationally by their sub-division Buena Vista International, while Searchlight Pictures operates their own autonomous distribution and marketing unit. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment distributes the films produced by 20th Century and Searchlight in home media under their respective labels. The first film released by Disney under the studio's new name was The Call of the Wild, which was released on February 21, 2020. That same year, Ford vs. Ferrari (2019), among its four Academy Award nominations, earned the studio its first Best Picture nomination post-Disney acquisition.

Television division

20th Television is the television production division of 20th Century Studios. It was known as 20th Century Fox Television until it adopted the 20th Television name in 2020. The 20th Television name was already in use prior to 2020, as the original 20th Television was the studio's television syndication division until it was folded into Disney–ABC Domestic Television in 2020.

During the mid-1950s, feature films were released to television in the hope that they would broaden sponsorship and help the distribution of network programs. Blocks of one-hour programming of feature films to national sponsors on 128 stations were organized by 20th Century Fox and National Telefilm Associates. 20th Century Fox received 50% interest in the NTA Film Network after it sold its library to National Telefilm Associates. This gave 90 minutes of cleared time a week and syndicated feature films (under the package title "Premiere Performance") to 110 non-interconnected stations for sale to national sponsors.

Buyout of Four Star

Fox bought out the remaining assets of Four Star Television from Ronald Perelman's Compact Video in 1996. The majority of Four Star Television's library of programs are controlled by 20th Television today. After Murdoch's numerous buyouts during the buyout era of the eighties, News Corporation had built up financial debts of $7 billion (much from Sky TV in the UK), despite the many assets that were held by NewsCorp. The high levels of debt caused Murdoch to sell many of the American magazine interests he had acquired in the mid-1980s.

Music

Between 1933 and 1937, a custom record label called Fox Movietone was produced starting at F-100 and running through F-136. It featured songs from 20th Century Fox movies, first using material recorded and issued on Victor's Bluebird label and halfway through switched to material recorded and issued on ARC's dime store labels (Melotone, Perfect, etc.). These scarce records were sold only at Fox Theaters.

The music arm of 20th Century Fox, 20th Century-Fox Records, was founded in 1958. It released soundtracks to Fox films, as well as non-film related albums by artists such as The Alan Parsons Project, Barry White and Maureen McGovern. It would be shut down in 1981 and sold the following year, with the rights to its catalog now being controlled by Universal Music Group.

Fox Records was the 20th Century Fox's music arm since 1992 before being renamed to Fox Music in 2000. It encompasses music publishing and licensing businesses, dealing primarily with Fox Entertainment Group's television and film soundtracks under license by Universal Music Group, EMI, PolyGram, Bertelsmann Music Group, Sony Music, and Warner Music Group. It would also go defunct on January 17, 2020, and was subsequently folded into Hollywood Records. New Regency, which Fox had a 20% stake in beginning in 1997, acquired the label Restless Records in 1997, and it handled soundtracks for Fox/Regency co-productions, including Fight Club and Malcolm in the Middle, in addition to releasing non-soundtrack albums by rock artists. Regency sold the label in 2001.

Newman Scoring Stage

The Newman Scoring Stage, named after composer Alfred Newman, is a large scoring studio located on the Fox Studio Lot, spanning almost 700 square meters, and is one of the largest music recording spaces in the world. It is also equipped with a 96 Channel AMS Neve 88RS-SP mixing console.

Radio

The Twentieth Century Fox Presents radio series were broadcast between 1936 and 1942. More often than not, the shows were a radio preview featuring a medley of the songs and soundtracks from the latest movie being released into the theaters, much like the modern-day movie trailers we now see on TV, to encourage folks to head down to their nearest Picture House.

The radio shows featured the original stars, with the announcer narrating a lead-up that encapsulated the performance.

Motion picture film processing

From its earliest ventures into movie production, Fox Film Corporation operated its own processing laboratories. The original lab was located in Fort Lee, New Jersey along with the studios. A lab was included with the new studio built in Los Angeles in 1916. Headed by Alan E. Freedman, the Fort Lee lab was moved into the new Fox Studios building in Manhattan in 1919. In 1932, Freedman bought the labs from Fox for $2,000,000 to bolster what at that time was a failing Fox liquidity. He renamed the operation "DeLuxe Laboratories," which much later became Deluxe Entertainment Services Group. In the 1940s Freedman sold the labs back to what was then 20th Century Fox and remained as president into the 1960s. Under Freedman's leadership, DeLuxe added two more labs in Chicago and Toronto and processed film from studios other than Fox, such as UA and Universal.

Divisions

Current

20th Century Family is an American family-friendly production division of 20th Century Studios. Besides family-friendly theatrical films, the division oversees mixed media (live-action with animation), family animated holiday television specials based on film properties, and film features based on TV shows. On October 30, 2017, Morrison was transferred from her post as president of 20th Century Animation, the prior Fox Family Films, to be president of a newly created 20th Century Fox division, Fox Family, which as a mandate similar to Fox Family Films. The division's president also pick up supervision of a Bob's Burgers film and some existing deals with animation producers done via Gerard Bevan and Andy Watts, including Tonko House. With the sale of 21st Century Fox to Disney in March 2019, rights to The Dam Keeper feature animated film returned to Tonko House. With the August 2019 20th Century Fox slate overhaul announcement, 20th Century Fox properties such as Star Wars, Home Alone, Night at the Museum, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Cheaper by the Dozen, and the Ice Age spin-off have been assigned for Disney+ release and assigned to 20th Century Family. On March 12, 2020, Morrison was named president, Streaming, Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Production to oversee live action development and production and 20th Century Studios for Disney+.

20th Century Animation is an American animation studio organized as a division of 20th Century Studios, a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios. Originally formed in 1994 as its subsidiary, it is tasked with producing feature-length films. At one point subsidiaries were Fox Animation Studios until 2000 and Blue Sky Studios until 2021. Its successful films and franchises include Don Bluth's Anastasia, The Simpsons Movie, and Blue Sky's Ice Age and Rio film series.

20th Century Games is an American video game licensor that was founded in 2021. Beforehand, Fox and later Disney used the standard 20th Century Fox/Studios brand for licensing video games. Before that, Fox had their own publishing division—Fox Interactive (which was best known for Croc, No One Lives Forever, The Simpsons and Futurama games) which was founded in 1994 and sold to Vivendi Universal Games in March 2003 and later dissolved in 2006.

20th Century Comics is a comic publishing company formed in March 2023 in partnership with Marvel Comics. Beforehand, Fox had its own comic division under the now-defunct Fox Atomic brand in collaboration with HarperCollins.

Former

Fox 2000 Pictures was an American sister studio of the larger film studios 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight Pictures specializing in producing independent films in mid-range releases that largely targeted mid-ranged groups. The company dissolved in May 2021 following the release of The Woman in the Window on Netflix, and the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney in March 2019. Its successful films include Marley & Me, Life of Pi, The Fault in Our Stars, Love, Simon, Fight Club, and both Alvin and the Chipmunks and Diary of a Wimpy Kid film series.

20th Digital Studio was an American web series and web films production and distribution company, founded in 2008 as a digital media, and is a subsidiary of 20th Century Studios. The division was dissolved in April 2023.

Fox Studios was a former group of three major movie studios, each part of the defunct Fox Entertainment Group. The three film studios were Fox Studios Australia in Sydney, Australia, Fox Studios Baja in Lower California and the oldest studio, Fox Studios in Century City, home of 20th Century Fox. Disney continues to own Fox Studios Australia, now known as Disney Studios Australia. Fox Entertainment Group sold off the Baja Studios in 2007, and the Century City studios were retained by Fox Corporation, although Disney remains a major tenant at the facility.

Fox VFX Lab was a former visual effects company division of 20th Century Fox that was acquired in 2017 known as Technoprops. It is led by president John Kilkenny. Besides their visual effects activities, the division oversaw different parts of the world to apply for and work on projects that include films such as Avatar, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Alita: Battle Angel, The Jungle Book, Rogue One, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Doctor Strange, and Warcraft and also video game properties like Need for Speed (2015), Battlefield 1, Rainbow Six Siege, Watch Dogs 2, Just Cause 3, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Assassin's Creed Syndicate, Mafia III, Halo 4, Street Fighter V, Call of Duty (Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Black Ops III), Far Cry (Far Cry 5 and Primal), Mortal Kombat (X and 11), and Sonic the Hedgehog (Forces and Team Sonic Racing). In 2020, Disney merged Fox VFX Lab into Lucasfilm's Industrial Light & Magic, using the Technoprops brand for the labs technology division, the majority of employees and executives were reportedly fired.

Fox Atomic is a former youth-focused film production company and division of Fox Filmed Entertainment that operated from 2006 to April 2009. Atomic was originally paired with either 20th Century Fox or its Fox Searchlight division under their same, respective leadership. In late 2006, Fox Atomic was started up under Fox Searchlight head Peter Rice and COO John Hegeman as a sibling production division under Fox Filmed Entertainment. Debbie Liebling transferred to Fox Atomic in 2007 from Fox. In January 2008, Atomic's marketing unit was transferred to Fox Searchlight and 20th Century Fox, when Hegeman moved to Regency Enterprises. Debbie Liebling became president. After two middling successes and falling short with other films, the unit was shut down in April 2009. The remaining films under Atomic in production and post-productions were transferred to 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight with Liebling overseeing them.

Logo and fanfare

The 20th Century Fox production logo and fanfare originated as the logo of Twentieth Century Pictures and was adopted by 20th Century-Fox after the merger in 1935. It consists of a stacked block-letter three-dimensional, monolithic logotype (nicknamed "the Monument") surrounded by Art deco buildings and illuminated by searchlights. In the production logo that appears at the start of films, the searchlights are animated and the sequence is accompanied by a distinctive fanfare that was originally composed in 1933 by Alfred Newman. The original layout of the logo was designed by special effects animator and matte painting artist Emil Kosa Jr.

In 1953, Rocky Longo, an artist at Pacific Title, was hired to recreate the original logo design for the new CinemaScope picture process. Longo tilted the "0" in "20th" to have the logo maintain proportions in the wider CinemaScope format. Alfred Newman also composed an extended version of the logo's fanfare to be heard during the CinemaScope logo that would follow after the Fox logo. Although the format had since declined, director George Lucas specifically requested that the CinemaScope version of the fanfare be used for the opening titles of Star Wars (1977). Additionally, the film's main theme was composed by John Williams in the same key as the fanfare (B♭ major), serving as an extension to it of sorts. In 1981, the logo was altered with the re-straightening of the "0" in "20th".

In 1994, after a few failed attempts, Fox in-house television producer Kevin Burns was hired to produce a new logo for the company, this time using the then-new process of computer-generated imagery (CGI) adding more detail and animation, with the longer 21-second Fox fanfare arranged by Bruce Broughton used as the underscore, and a byline reading "A NEWS CORPORATION COMPANY". It would later be re-recorded by David Newman in 1997 and again in 1998.

In 2009, an updated logo created by Blue Sky Studios (a prototype version of the 2009 structure exists) debuted with the release of Avatar. In 2013, the News Corporation byline was removed.

On September 16, 2014, 20th Century Fox posted a video showcasing all of the various versions of the logo, plus the "William Fox Presents" version of the Fox Film logo and the 20th Century Pictures logo, including some variations, up until the 2009 version of the logo, with the 1998 re-arrangement version of the 1997 version of the fanfare composed by David Newman, to promote the new Fox Movies website.

Film library

Highest-grossing films

‡ — Includes theatrical reissue(s)