Brief Overview
Founded May 31st 1935 by William Fox, Joseph Schnenck, and Darryl Zanuck, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation has grown to become one of the leading film production companies in the world. Along with the five other major film studios, 20th Century Fox has its headquarters based in Los Angeles, California. The studio is actually a subsidiary of News Corporation, which is headed by Rupert Murdoch. The company was officially created when Fox Film Corporation merged with Twentieth Century Pictures in 1935. Some of 20th Century Fox’s most well-known films include The Star Wars Trilogy, X-Men, and Die Hard just to name a few. The company is also responsible for such TV Shows as The Simpsons, Family Guy, and American Dad. Actors such as Marilyn Monroe and Shirley Temple have been film stars who were employed by 20th Century Fox. The studio also has partnership with Lucasfilm, EuropaCorp, and Spyglass Entertainment.
Recently, 20th Fox Century has been spotlighted in the news for its claims that Blue-Ray technology is not dead. The studio says that they plan to revive this fairly new technology by retailing more movies and improving overall quality. The production company also recently pulled a trailer for a summertime movie release called Neighbourhood Watch because some found it inappropriate for its PG Rating. Fox will continue to maintain its prominent and strong position in the large field of producing media in film, television, and music.
Brief History –> Current State
1935- began a two company merger.
Fox Film Corporation joined Twentieth Century Pictures to complete what would become one of the most powerful and widespread film companies to ever exist. The company originally started as an independent distributor for film distribution company, United Artists. When important stocks were loss, Co-founder, Darryl Zanuck, began searching for new investors and distributors for movie productions. In May, 1935, Fox Film’s Sidney Kent decided to attempt to merge with Twentieth Century Pictures with hopes of helping his ailing Fox company. Eventually, with Kent as president, Zanuck as head-of-production, and Joseph Schenck as chairman, one of Hollywood’s biggest film powerhouses was created.
The progression of the logo for the company has gone through 10 existing changes throughout its 75 plus years of progression.
1935 (founding date)
2010 (75th Anniversary)
The technology and graphics of a large amount of what Fox is comprised of have drastically improved over the years. Fox now offers many popular animated cartoons.
The 1950’s brought much struggle for the somewhat thriving company. The advent and social boom of public television in domestic settings interfered harshly with the progression of any movie company during this time. Fox had made big investments in some movies, hoping that there would be an opportunity to strike a large sum of money before they predicted television’s massive expansion.
Zanuck almost independently produced low-budgeted movies in these times of desperation. Fox Studios produced over 20 movies in only 14 months. The mid 1960’s brought serious positive optimism for Zanuck and his company. The release of The Sound of Music in 1964 was the predicted payoff that Zanuck had hoped for. The film grossed over $80 million in revenues, and became top of the box office charts for weeks. In surpassing MGM’s Gone with the Wind, which monetarily had not been topped for almost 30 years, 20th Century Fox became prominent as one of America’s most powerful studio companies.
Some 45 years later, Fox still makes profit from this musical movie, as in 2010, the film was released in Blue-Ray.
Again, the 1980’s brought struggle for the company as they released three consecutive movies with a lack of profit. The budgets outweighed the profits for movies such as:
The Rose, and I Ought to be in Pictures.
In 1985, News Corporation’s Rupert Murdoch, invested $132 million in 20th Century Fox to own half of the company. With the combination of this money, the resources Murdoch offered, and the acquirement of several television networks, Fox Studios almost immediately advanced $88 million in profits. Just recently in late April, a committee of British lawmakers claimed that Murdoch was inevitably unfit to run his News Corp company, along with 20th Century Fox.
With the help of Murdoch’s fundings, 20th Century Fox was able to establish itself as one of America’s most thriving and successful Film studios to ever exist.
In 1988, The New York Times, headlined an article: “20th Century-Fox Advances in Box-Office War.” The release of Tom Hanks’ Big profited the company over $100 million. This was a major milestone for 20th Century Fox in becoming one of the top movie production companies.
See NYTimes article
20th Century Fox hangs on to the 5th position of the “Big Five” Studio Production Companies. It trails such industry giants as Universal and Sony.
The following chart represents the money distribution to the top ten film production companies in America in the year 2012:
20th Century Fox should continue to remain a dominant force for film production in the movie industry for much time to come.
After Fox attempted to delay DVD production of some popular films, Redbox, the 1 dollar per night DVD rental technology, has decided to sue Fox because they felt as if this action would intentionally delay Redbox sales and put their business at a disadvantage. A news article on this major drawback in Fox’s thriving success can be found here:
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/3894082/
News Source recently published an article that spoke of choosing a new software to monitor Fox’s video content around the world.
The technology, called Civolution, will track audience members’ usage of any of Fox’s video content. It will also manage and hopefully monetize much of what Fox publicly broadcasts via television, movies, the internet, or any other source of media information today.
The service offered is called Teletrax. Teletrax will help to establish certain viewing preferences, trends, and predictions that can be made for 20 Century Fox’s future. For example, Fox is currently monitoring video data usage in other places across the world, such as Europe, and the Middle-East. This allows Fox to analyze user data globally and helps the company to compare American data with data from places around the world.
News Source interviewed with 20 Century Fox’s ECO, Tom Rothman, about the future release of some Fox Studio made films. Two included were the mention of, yet another, X-Men movie. This promises to be a box-office success according to Rothman, who claims the movie features a more “Bad ass Wolverine” character. (Complex Magazine)
Rothman also spoke of the 2012 release of the new Die Hard series movie. A Good Day to Die Hard will feature the ageless Bruce Willis, but also the inclusion of his son. The film aims to satisfy mostly a male audience. Rothman claimed that the film will attract many for its usage of rarely seen emotions from Bruce Willis because he has grown close with his son. The film hopes to be another successful inclusion to the very popular Die Hard series.
Super hero movies that Fox has been responsible for have often disappointed audience members. Fox hopes to reboot their making of a new Fantastic Four movie after the previous two failures. Fox also hopes to rewrite or remake many of its older stories. The unsuccessful film, Daredevil, saw little box-office and domestic success. It was claimed as one of the worst super hero movies of all time in fact. Fox has recently hired David James Kelly to rewrite another Daredevil movie. While Kelly has no actual prior Hollywood screenplay writing background, Fox Studios hopes that the second go at this super hero film will be much more of a success.
20th Century Fox is always hoping to move forward in their movie production, and in their presence in many other media industries. The addition on many anticipated films should promise to keep Fox’s business thriving for years to come.
Whether Fox will surpass other production companies is at question; the studio should not worry much about losing its top ranks though.
The following page link outlines, by year, all the movies that 20th Century Fox has ever released.
Full List of 20th Century Fox Movies
Fox employs thousands of workers worldwide, owns dozens of global headquarters, and is partially responsible for much that we see in the movies, television, the news, the internet, and any other media source we use.