Fox Animation Studios

**Fox Animation Studios** was an American animation studio located in Phoenix, Arizona, and the former in-house feature animation division of 20th Century Fox (now part of The Walt Disney Company). After six years of operation, the studio was shut down on June 26, 2000, ten days after the release of its final film *Titan A.E.*, and was replaced by Fox's Blue Sky Studios and Century City divisions.

## History

After the financially unsuccessful release of Don Bluth Entertainment-produced film *Thumbelina* in 1994, animators Don Bluth and Gary Goldman were hired by Bill Mechanic, then-chairman of 20th Century Fox, to create a brand new Fox animation studio. Mechanic and John Matoian, president of Fox Family Films, also brought in Stephen Brain (Executive VP at Silver Pictures) as Senior VP/General Manager to oversee the startup of the studio and run day-to-day operations of the division.

The company was designed to compete with Walt Disney Feature Animation, which had phenomenal success during the late 1980s and early 1990s with the releases of films such as *The Little Mermaid* (1989), *Beauty and the Beast* (1991), *Aladdin* (1992), and *The Lion King* (1994). Disney veterans Bluth and Goldman came in 1994 to Fox from Sullivan Bluth Studios, which had produced *An American Tail*, *The Land Before Time,* and *All Dogs Go To Heaven*, among other films.

Before Bluth came to Fox, the studio distributed three animated features produced by outside studios during the 1990s: *FernGully: The Last Rainforest*, *Once Upon a Forest,* and *The Pagemaster*, the last two of which were both commercial and critical failures. Even before, Fox distributed *Hugo the Hippo*, the Ralph Bakshi features *Wizards* and *Fire and Ice*, as well as *Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure*. Also, Fox distributed *Asterix Conquers America* in France and the United Kingdom.

Fox Animation Studios did not achieve the same level of success as Disney's animated crop due to increased competition from Pixar and DreamWorks Animation, the declining revenues of the Disney Renaissance, and the rise of computer animation. The studio's first three films *Anastasia* (1997), *Sister Light, Sister Dark* (1998), and *Toonlympics* (1999) found critical and box office success, but their fourth film *Titan A.E.* (2000) recieved mixed reviews and was a costly flop, losing $100 million for 20th Century Fox. Nearly a year before its closure, Fox laid off 300 of the nearly 380 people who worked at the Phoenix studio in order to "make films more efficiently".

On June 26, 2000, the studio was shut down after six years of operation, resulting from financial failure and poor problems. Their last film set to be made would have been an adaptation of Wayne Barlowe's illustrated novel *Barlowe's Inferno*, and was set to be done entirely with computer animation. The former headquarters for the studio sat unused and abandoned until it was demolished in 2017. As of now, it is put up for sale.

## Productions

* *Anastasia* (1997)
* *Sister Light, Sister Dark* (1998)
* *Felix vs. the Multiplex* (1998)
* *The Prince of Egypt* (1998) (additional final line animation)
* *Toonlympics* (1999)
* *Bartok the Magnificent* (1999)
* *Titan A.E.* (2000)

## See also

* 20th Century Animation
* 20th Century Animation Century City
* Blue Sky Studios