End of an era.
Effective immediately, 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight will no longer feature the “Fox” portion of their names. Instead, they’ll just be 20th Century and Searchlight.
Disney supposedly made the decision to drop part of the 85-year-old studio’s name so as to differentiate it from Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. Which, I don’t think was that much of a problem to begin with, considering I personally always mentally saw it as a “name’s the same” sort of thing, I’d actually have to be reminded that Murdoch owned them in the past. But hey, that’s how it goes.
Employees were sort of blindsided by the change today, coming in to find that the were operating with a new email format (@20thcenturystudios). Disney has confirmed that both 20th Century Studios and Searchlight Pictures are dropping the Fox from their titles.
The first film to debut under the Searchlight Pictures name will be Downhill, starring Will Ferrell and Julia Louis Dreyfuss, premiering February 14th. Meanwhile, The Call of the Wild, starring Harrison Ford and releasing February 21st, will be the first under the 20th Century Studios name. The iconic fanfare and monolithic logo will still exist, just, you know, without the word “Fox” anywhere to be seen.
This isn’t the first time Disney has rebranded something Fox since the merger. Back in October 2019, they rolled 20th Century Fox Television into a new entity: Disney Television Studios.
Still, this is an odd choice, given what they paid for the brand, as well as the history behind the main label. Everything from The Grapes of Wrath to The Sound of Music to Die Hard and Alien were part of the label’s history.
Source: The New York Times
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