20th Century Studios

### Founded

January 15, 1933 (as 20th Century Pictures, LLC.)April 7, 1935 (as 20th Century Fox/Studios)

### Location

Fox Studio Lot, Century City, Los Angeles, California, United States

### Parent

AT&T Studios

**20th Century Studios** (formerly **20th Century Pictures, Inc.** from 1933 to 1935, and **20th Century Fox** from 1935 to 2020) is an American film distribution and production arm of AT&T Studios, which is the film division of AT&T Pictures Entertainment (which is one of the "Big Ten" major fiilm studios and a entertainment division of the American cell-phone company AT&T).

It was founded through a merger between 20th Century Pictures, Inc. and Fox Film.

20th Century Studios was once owned by the American entertainment company 21st Century Fox (now Fox Corporation) from 1972 to 2019, when AT&T acquired the film, cable, sports and television assets.

On January 17, 2020, 20th Century Studios was adopted its current name.

## History

### As 20th Century Pictures, Inc.

On January 15, 1933, 20th Century Pictures, Inc. was founded by Joseph Zanuck and Darryl F. Schenck, and began operations on June 15 of the same year.

20th Century Pictures was then declared major movie studio, despite being a production company with no distribution offices. They then signed a distribution pact with United Artists to distribute its movies. On April 15, 1934, the company payed a $500,000 dub.

###### Merger with Fox Film, Inc.

On December 5, 1934, 20th Century Pictures was in talks with the distribution and production company Fox Film, which is also a major film studio, to create a possible merger. Fox Film was almost on the verge of bankruptcy, 20th Century Pictures acquired Fox on January 15, 1935. On March 15, 1935, it was announced that the 20th Century-Fox merger has began operations and is likely to be complete by May 1935.

The merger was completed on May 31, 1935 and 20th Century Pictures, Inc. and Fox Film came together to create 20th Century-Fox.

### 20th Century-Fox, Inc.

###### 1930s

When 20th Century Pictures/Fox Film became 20th Century Fox, the company now had their own distribution offices. The studio's first release after the merger was *Under the Pampas Moon* on June 1, 1935. It received favorable reviews and won Best Picture nomination. They then had another hit on April 1936; *A Message to Garcia* (which was first produced at 20th Century Pictures, Inc*.*)*.*

By 1938; 20th Century Fox had successes like *In Old Chicago, Alexander's Rangtime Band, My Lucky Star, Little Miss Broadway* and *Kentucky,* in which the former two were nominated Best Picture, making Fox the first film studio to win two Best Picture nominations

###### 1940s-early 1950s

Despite the great depression and World War II, 20th Century Fox was very profitable. In 1941, they had a sleeper hit called *How Green Was My Valley.* By April 15, 1941, Fox began distributing Disney's animated films from April 1941 to 1953.

On August 3, 1941, 20th Century Fox created their UK production arm. Over the rest of the early-mid 1940s, 20th Century-Fox received hits like 1942's *The Pied Piper* and *Girl Trouble,* 1943's *The Ox-Bow Incident, Heaven Can Wait* and *The Song of Bernadette,* 1944's *Wilson*, 1945's *The Way Ahead* and *A Bell for Adano,* and 1946's *The Razor's Edge.*

In 1942, Spyros Skouras entered 20th Century-Fox as president of the company, following Sidney Kent left the company due to business differences. On January 15, 1947, Nicholas Moore was hired as CEO of the company. On May 15, 1947, Skouras resigned from the company to create the "SaveFox" campaign due to Nicholas Moore's entrance from the company. Nicholas Moore was fired on October 1947, and Skouras returned to the company and hired Micheal Nichon as Moore's replacement.

On April 1950, 20th Century Fox fired Joseph Schneck and replaced him with the former CEO Nicholas Moore.

###### mid-late 1950s and setbacks

On April 15, 1955, 20th Century-Fox fired Nicholas Moore again and sold the UK production division to Yoram Globus, the future founder of The Cannon Film Group, Inc., and the UK division went defunct and was replaced by an American company which eventually became Golan-Globus, Inc.

On April 15, 1957, Darryl Zanuck resigned from the company after disagreements with Nichon. Then a year later on 1958, Zanuck's successor Buddy Adler passed away.

###### Financial and studio problems in the 1960s

Starting in 1960, 20th Century-Fox was starting to suffer a series of expensive bombs, with *Cimmaron* (1960), *King of Kings* (1961), *Four Horsement to the Apocolypse* and most notoriously, *Mutiny on the Bounty* (1962).

Spyros then resigned from the company again on May 3, 1964 to create the second "SaveFox" campaign which would have Nichon kicked out. However, Nichon would never leave the company until 1969 when Rupert Murdoch took over the company, and Spyros re-entered the company again on 1969.

On May 29, 1965, Fox reported a large net loss of $565.5 million, from flops like *How The West Has Won* (1962) and *Cleopatra* (1963). On December 15, 1966, 20th Century-Fox was put up for sale and was acquired by 15-year old Johnny Davis Jr. on April 15, 1967. However, Davis sold the company two years later to Murdoch after he went on to create his own film studio.

### FOX Entertainment, Inc./Fox Entertainment Group

When Murdoch acquired 20th Century-Fox, he renamed the company to FOX Entertainment (even though their logo still had the name 20th Century Fox), and then three years later in 1972, he merged it with Cannel Communications to create Fox Entertainment Group.

In 1971, Spyros passed away from a heart attack and was replaced by David Michner.

On April 15, 1974, 20th Century-Fox removed their hiven and turned from 20th Century-Fox to 20th Century Fox Film Corporation. Then on May 1978, FOX Entertainment Group opened up the FOX Casino.

### FOX/News Entertainment

On April 10, 1980, Rupert Murdoch acquired News Inc. and merged it with 20th Century-Fox to rename FOX Entertainment into FOX/News Entertainment. News Inc. was renamed to Fox News, then on August 7, 1980, Rupert Murdoch acquired Refunile Sports and renamed it FOX Sports.

On July 5, 1981, FOX/News Entertainment created a distribution unit called FOX/News Distribution Co.

### FOX Communications

On August 7, 1985, Jeffrey Katzenberg offered to buy FOX/News Entertainment for $10.5 billion. As cable networking and television became more offered by other companies, on April 23, 1986, Murdoch agreed to sell the company to Katzenberg Entertainment for $11 billion. When Katzenberg approved and completed the acquisition, Katzenberg renamed FOX/News Entertainment to News/FOX Entertainment, as Katzenberg sold Fox News to Murdoch.

On July 15, 1986, after some controversy on whether Katzenberg could keep the company, Katzenberg sold 20th Century Fox right back to Rupert Murdoch, including Fox's library and assets for $50.10 billion. Katzenberg was interested in keeping the library, but the effort failed after Fox rejected selling their library, in fear of switching from a major film studio to a mini-major.

After the sale, David Michner then stepped down in order to create the company Michner Studios.

### FOX/News Communications

On August 3, 1986, after the Katzenberg sale and controversy, News/FOX Communications was dropped from the name, and the FOX/News name was reused, but