By Katie Moshenek

20th Century Fox logo for Runner Runner(2013) [1]

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

10201 W. Pico Blvd

Los Angeles, CA 90064

www.foxmovies.com

Brief history

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, also known as 20th Century Fox, is currently one of the major film studios in America. Starting in 1935 as a merger between two major film corporations, 20th Century Fox was sold to News Corp. in 1985, and in early 2013 News Corp. split into News Corp. and 21st Century Fox, with the latter company retaining Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation.[2][3] Movies that 20th Century Fox is most known for include Avatar, the Star Wars franchise (now with Disney), and Independence Day.[4]

Key Executives

Rupert Murdoch [5]

21st Century Fox Chairman and CEO- Rupert Murdoch

Rupert Murdoch was in charge of News Corp. since 1979 and when the company split in June 2013, Murdoch became Executive Chairman of News Corp. and the Chairman and CEO of 21st Century Fox, of which 20th Century Fox is a subsidiary of. Murdoch has been extremely influential in media through purchasing media companies and creating his own.[6]

Jim N. Gianopulos [7]

20th Century Fox Chairman and CEO- James N. Gianopulos

James N. Gianopulos has been at 20th Century Fox as President of 20th Century Fox International and then CEO since 1994, overseeing Titanic and Avatar, the highest grossing films of all time.[8]

Financials

June 30th is the end of 21st Century Fox’s fiscal year and according to their reports, for 20th Century Fox this past year was up $300 million from $8.36 billion to $8.64 billion. This past quarter, which encompassed all of April, May, and June of 2013, was also up $21 million from the past quarter from $2.014 billion to $2.035 billion.[9]

In Recent News

The Book Thief poster [10]

20th Century Fox’s movie The Book Thief is out in limited release until Thanksgiving weekend in hopes it will gain momentum and find its audience. [11] The book-turned-movie is about a little girl in WWII finding solace in stealing and sharing books when Nazi’s in Germany are burning them up. Leading up to the movie’s release though, Fox was not letting a marketing chance pass by and ended with some truly creative advertising. On October 23rd, Fox bought two whole pages of ad space in The New York Times, which is worth $105,840, and left them completely blank except for a small url on the second page which goes to a site about the film.[12]

Little Free Library [13]

Further creative marketing has popped up. On November 20th Century Fox also partnered with Little Free Libraries, a company that creates little free “’take a book, leave a book’ gathering places”, to advertise 20th Century Fox’s upcoming movie The Book Thief by creating custom Little Libraries.[13]

Ivanhoe Pictures [14]

Also in early November, 20th Century Fox’s subsidiary Fox International Productions made a deal with Ivanhoe Pictures, a TV and film company. Ivanhoe Pictures is a recent company and focuses on projects with global appeal. Ivanhoe Pictures has signed a four year, $130 million co-finance deal with FIP and the money will go towards co-financing 10 local-language projects FIP has now in India, South Korea, China, and Taiwan. Those areas are the top four local Asian markets and the companies don’t intend to miss out on any action, especially within China, which is predicted to soon be the largest film market in the world.[15][16]

What’s Next?

Proposed Miami Wilds[17]

20th Century Fox and Dinosaurier-Park International, a Germany company that runs the biggest outdoor dinosaur park in Europe, are battling over park space in Miami-Dade County. With 120 vacant acres, the space surrounds Zoo Miami and after over a decade of work, the county is finally vetting the two companies’ proposals. If the county decides to go with 20th Century Fox’s proposal for “Miami Wilds”, the park will become a theme park inspired by their two blockbuster animated films Ice Age and Rio, will cost $930 million to make, create 2,750 jobs, have 30,000 square feet of retail space, outdoor event space, and a massive water park, and would open around 2018.[17]

Epic Magazine Logo [18]

In late August when Epic Magazine launched with its new business model for journalism, 20th Century Fox was the first to bite. Launched by two seasoned magazine-to-movie writers, one whom had even written the Wired Magazine story that was the base for Argo [19], Epic was created to have long and in-depth articles published online for free and would be funded by selling the film rights to film companies.

Though 20th Century Fox and Epic only have a first-look deal, it’s nothing to disregard. The deal will allow 20th Century Fox do just what the deal sounds like: get a first look, and be the first in line to purchase the film rights if Fox wants the story. It’s a great deal for Fox so that they will get to have first pick of fresh stories, but also good for the magazine who will not only make money off of it, but will not have to go through the chaos of fighting film companies when an article gets noticed.[20][21]

Online Silk Road Marketplace Logo[22]

In mid-October, 20th Century Fox snagged its first article to use despite it not even being written yet.[23]The article being written by Joshua Davis is a real and ongoing story, and is about the owner of the online black market site “Silk Road” who was arrested for drug trafficking as well as hiring a hitman to kill one of his employees.[24] 20th Century Fox has already hired Dennis Lehane, writer of Shutter Island and Mystic River as well as episodes of Boardwalk Empire and The Wire, to turn the article into a script. Fox has also hired Peter Chernin and Jenno Topping to produce alongside the two founders of Epic Magazine, Joshua Davis and Joshuah Bearman.[25]