Disney drops Fox from names of studios it bought from Murdoch
LOS ANGELES >> Sound the trumpets: Twentieth Century Fox, a name and klieglit logo that stretches back 85 years in Hollywood, is dropping the word Fox, a move that may prevent consumers mistakenly thinking the movie studio has anything to do Rupert Murdoch’s polarizing Fox News media empire.
The Walt Disney Co. bought most of Murdoch’s entertainment assets last year in a $71.3 billion deal. That included the Twentieth Century Fox studio and its art-house sibling, Fox Searchlight. On Friday, employees at the main movie studio arrived to a new email format (@20thcenturystudios) without the Fox. A Disney spokesman confirmed that both labels, now officially known as Twentieth Century Studios and Searchlight Pictures, would drop Fox from their logos. Disney had no further comment.
“Downhill,” a comedic drama starring Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, will be the first movie to bear the Searchlight Pictures name. It arrives in theaters Feb. 14. “The Call of the Wild,” set for release Feb. 21 and starring Harrison Ford, will carry the Twentieth Century logo. The trumpet fanfare (composed by Alfred Newman in 1933), klieg lights and familiar monolith logo will remain.
In October, Twentieth Century Fox Television, a small-screen studio that Disney bought as part of the deal, became part of a new entity, Disney Television Studios.
Murdoch still owns the Fox broadcast network, Fox News and a chain of 28 local Fox television stations, among other media assets. His new company is called Fox Corp.
Fox News remains a media superpower, but its brand has become a polarizing one. The network’s founding chairman, Roger Ailes, and one of its most popular on-air personalities, Bill O’Reilly, became the focus of sexual harassment scandals in recent years. Its prime-time opinion hosts are vocal supporters of President Donald Trump.
Movies have been branded with the Fox name for more than a century. The name dates to 1915, when William Fox, a Hungarian immigrant, left the fur and garment industry to start a motion picture company. The 1929 stock market crash, among other misfortunes, forced Fox Film Corp. to merge with a competitor, Twentieth Century Pictures, to form Twentieth Century Fox in 1935. The combined company made such Hollywood classics as “The Sound of Music,” “All About Eve,” “Alien” and “Die Hard.”