TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Disney is dropping the Fox name from 20th Century Studios
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Signage is displayed outside the entrance to 20th Century Fox Studios in the Century City neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. (Bloomberg/Patrick T. Fallon)
W
alt Disney Co. is removing the Fox name from future films 10 months after completing the $71 billion acquisition of the 20th Century Fox entertainment assets, dropping a brand closely tied to the Rupert Murdoch media empire.
Future movies from that studio will be branded as 20th Century Studios, and the Fox Searchlight art-house division will become Searchlight Pictures. Employees in those divisions have already had their email addresses switched to the new monikers.
Read also: Global box office has biggest ever year thanks to Disney mega-hits
While Disney had made cuts in staff at the former Fox studio, it is still releasing the acquired company’s films. Disney is expected to continue to use the 20th Century and Searchlight brands, particularly for R-rated films like “Deadpool” that wouldn’t be appropriate for the family-friendly Disney label.
The new branding will appear on upcoming releases “Downhill,” with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell, and “Call of the Wild,” starring Harrison Ford. Variety reported the name change earlier Friday.
Fox Corp., a separate business controlled by the Murdoch family, continues to operate the Fox News Channel, the Fox broadcast network and other media businesses.
The branding change is something of a restoration: 20th Century Fox was formed from the merger of Twentieth Century Pictures and Fox Film Corp. in 1935.
