20th Century Studios

**20th Century Studios, Inc.** is an American film studio that is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, a division of The Walt Disney Company. The studio is located on the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distributes and markets the films produced by 20th Century.

20th Century was one of the "Big Six" major American film studios for over 80 years. Formerly known as the **Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation**, it was formed from the merger of the Fox Film Corporation and 20th Century Pictures in 1935. In 1985, the studio became known as **20th Century Fox** after being acquired by News Corporation, which was split and succeeded by 21st Century Fox in 2013, after spinning off its publishing assets. In 2019, Disney purchased 20th Century through its acquisition of 21st Century Fox. The studio's current name was adopted on January 17, 2020.

## History

*See also: Fox Film and Twentieth Century Pictures*
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). Aside from the theater chain and a first-rate studio lot, Zanuck and Schenck felt there was not much else to Fox, which had been reeling since the founder William Fox lost control of the company in 1930. The studio's biggest star, Will Rogers, died in a plane crash weeks after the merger. Its leading female star, Janet Gaynor, was fading in popularity and promising leading men James Dunn and Spencer Tracy had been dropped because of heavy drinking.

At first, it was expected that the new company was originally to be called "Fox-20th Century", even though 20th Century was the senior partner in the merger. However, 20th Century brought more to the bargaining table besides Schenck and Zanuck; it was more profitable than Fox and had considerably more talent. The new company, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, began trading on May 31, 1935; the hyphen was dropped in 1985. Kent remained as President, while Schenck became Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Zanuck became Vice President in Charge of Production, replacing Fox's longtime production chief Winfield Sheehan.

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 20th 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, 20th Century Fox claimed to have been founded in 1915, the year Fox Film was founded. For instance, it marked 1945 as its 30th anniversary. However, in recent years it has claimed the 1935 merger as its founding, even though most film historians agree it was founded in 1915.

The company's films retained the 20th Century Pictures searchlight logo on their opening credits as well as its opening fanfare, but with the name changed to 20th Century-Fox.

After the merger was completed, Zanuck quickly signed young actors who would carry Twentieth Century-Fox for years: Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Carmen Miranda, Don Ameche, Henry Fonda, Gene Tierney, Sonja Henie, and Betty Grable. Also on the Fox payroll he found two players who he built up into the studio's leading assets, Alice Faye and seven-year-old Shirley Temple. Favoring popular biographies and musicals, Zanuck built Fox back to profitability. Thanks to record attendance during World War II, Fox overtook RKO and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (Hollywood's biggest studio) to become the third most profitable film studio. While Zanuck went off for eighteen months' war service, junior partner William Goetz kept profits high by going for light entertainment. The studio's—indeed the industry's—biggest star was creamy blonde Betty Grable.

In 1942, Spyros Skouras succeeded Kent as president of the studio. Together with Zanuck, who returned in 1943, they intended to make Fox's output more serious-minded. During the next few years, with pictures like *The Razor's Edge*, *Wilson*, *Gentleman's Agreement*, *The Snake Pit*, *Boomerang*, and *Pinky*, Zanuck established a reputation for provocative, adult films. Fox also specialized in adaptations of best-selling books such as Ben Ames Williams' *Leave Her to Heaven* (1945), starring Gene Tierney, which was the highest-grossing Fox film of the 1940s. Fox also produced film versions of Broadway musicals, including the Rodgers and Hammerstein films, beginning with the musical version of *State Fair* (1945), the only work that the partnership wrote especially for films.

After the war, and with the advent of television, audiences slowly drifted away. Twentieth Century-Fox held on to its theaters until a court-mandated "divorce"; they were spun off as Fox National Theaters in 1953. That year, with attendance at half the 1946 level, Twentieth Century-Fox gambled on an unproven gimmick. Noting that the two film sensations of 1952 had been Cinerama, which required three projectors to fill a giant curved screen, and "Natural Vision" 3D, which got its effects of depth by requiring the use of polarized glasses, Fox mortgaged its studio to buy rights to a French anamorphic projection system which gave a slight illusion of depth without glasses. President Spyros Skouras struck a deal with the inventor Henri Chrétien, leaving the other film studios empty-handed, and in 1953 introduced CinemaScope in the studio's groundbreaking feature film *The Robe*.

Zanuck announced in February 1953 that henceforth all Fox pictures would be made in CinemaScope. To convince theater owners to install this new process, Fox agreed to help pay conversion costs (about $25,000 per screen); and to ensure enough product, Fox gave access to CinemaScope to any rival studio choosing to use it. Seeing the box-office for the first two CinemaScope features, *The Robe* and *How to Marry a Millionaire* (also 1953), Warner Bros., MGM, Universal Pictures (then known as Universal-International), Columbia Pictures and Disney quickly adopted the process. In 1956 Fox engaged Robert Lippert to establish a subsidiary company, Regal Pictures, later Associated Producers Incorporated to film B pictures in CinemaScope (but "branded" RegalScope). Fox produced new musicals using the CinemaScope process including *Carousel* and *The King and I* (both 1956).

CinemaScope brought a brief upturn in attendance, but by 1956 the numbers again began to slide. That year Darryl Zanuck announced his resignation as head of production. Zanuck moved to Paris, setting up as an independent producer, seldom being in the United States for many years.

### Marvin Davis and Rupert Murdoch

*Main articles: List of 20th Century Fox films (1935–1999), List of 20th Century Fox films (2000–present), and List of 20th Century Fox films (2000–present)*

With financial stability came new owners, when Fox was sold for more than $700 million in 1981 to investors Marc Rich and Marvin Davis. 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.

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. Davis sold this interest to Rupert Murdoch 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 Fox for $325 million.

To gain FCC approval of 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. Over the next 20-odd years the network and owned-stations group expanded to become extremely profitable for News Corp.

The company formed its Fox Family Films division in 1994 to boost production at the studio and would handled animation films. In February 1998, following the success of *Anastasia*, Fox Family Films changed its name to Fox Animation Studios and drop its live action production which would be picked up by other production units.

Since January 2000 this company has been the international distributor for MGM/UA releases. In the 1980s Fox — through a joint venture with CBS called CBS/Fox Video — had distributed certain UA films on video; thus UA has come full circle by switching to Fox for video distribution. Fox also makes money distributing films for small independent film companies.

In 2008 Fox announced an Asian subsidiary, Fox STAR Studios, a joint venture with STAR TV, also owned by News Corporation. It was reported that Fox STAR would start by producing films for the Bollywood market, then expand to several Asian markets.

In August 2012, 20th Century Fox signed a five-year deal with DreamWorks Animation to distribute in domestic and international markets. However, the deal did not include the distribution rights for previously released films which DreamWorks Animation acquired from Paramount Pictures later in 2014. Fox's deal with DreamWorks Animation ended on June 2, 2017 with *Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie*, with Universal Pictures taking over the distribution deal with DreamWorks Animation due to NBCUniversal's acquisition of DreamWorks Animation on August 22, 2016, starting on February 22, 2019 with the release of *How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World*.

In 2012 Rupert Murdoch announced that News Corp. would be split into two publishing and media-oriented companies: a new News Corporation, and 21st Century Fox, which operates the Fox Entertainment Group, including 20th Century Fox. Murdoch considered the name of the new company a way to maintain the 20th Century Fox's heritage as the group advances into the future.

### Acquisition by The Walt Disney Company

*Main article: Acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney*
On December 14, 2017, The Walt Disney Company (which owns studios such as Marvel and Lucasfilm, and operates networks such as ABC and ESPN) announced plans to purchase 21st Century Fox, which includes 20th Century Fox, for $52.4 billion. On May 23, 2018, it was reported that Comcast was planning to out-bid Disney with an all-cash offer for approximately $60 billion. On June 13, Comcast officially announced its $65 billion all-cash offer for Fox assets. One week later, Disney counterbid with a $71.3 billion offer. On July 19, 2018, Comcast officially announced that it was dropping its bid on the Fox assets in order to focus on their bid for Sky. On July 27, 2018, Disney and Fox shareholders approved the merger between the two companies. The deal was completed on March 20, 2019. 20th Century Fox will continue to use its name and logo under license from the Fox Corporation, 21st Century Fox's successor. On March 21, 2019, Disney announced it would shut down the Fox 2000 label.

## Television

*Main articles: 20th Century Fox Television, 20th Television, and Fox 21 Television Studios*
20th Television is Fox's television syndication division. 20th Century Fox Television is the studio's television production division.

During the mid-1950s features were released to television in the hope that they would broaden sponsorship and help distribution of network programs. Blocks of one-hour programming of feature films to national sponsors on 128 stations was organized by Twentieth Century Fox and National Telefilm Associates. Twentieth Century Fox received 50 percent interest in 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 to 110 non-interconnected stations for sale to national sponsors.

### Buyout of Four Star

Rupert Murdoch's 20th Century Fox bought out the remaining assets of Four Star Television from Ronald Perelman's Compact Video in 1996. Most of Four Star Television's library of programs are controlled by 20th Century Fox 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 News Corp. The high levels of debt caused Murdoch to sell many of the American magazine interests he had acquired in the mid-1980s.

## Music

*Main articles: 20th Century Fox Records and Fox 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 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.

Fox Music has been Fox's music arm since 2000. It encompasses music publishing and licensing businesses, dealing primarily with Fox Entertainment Group television and film soundtracks.

Prior to Fox Music, 20th Century Records was its music arm from 1958 to 1982.

## 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.

## Films

*Main articles: List of 20th Century Fox films (1935–1999) and List of 20th Century Fox films (2000–present)*

## External links

* Official website
* 20th Century Studios on IMDb