FILM COMPANY
JUNE 12, 2021
History of 20th Century fox studio
History Of 20th Century Fox is a colorful story as well as their movies that always entertain people worldwide for decades.
It all began when William Fox, a New York City exhibitor began distributing films in 1904 and started to produced some films in 1913. The Hungarian immigrant then moved his studio to Los Angeles and named it the Fox Film Corporation. Fox lost control of his company in 1930 because of Great Depression and financial problem.
In 1933 Darryl F. Zanuck and Joseph Schenck found Twentieth Century Pictures. The two companies then merged in 1935 to form Twentieth Century-Fox. From 1935 to 1955 Zanuck was head of production for the studio.
During the late 1930’s and 40’s Twentieth Century-Fox produced mainly musicals, westerns, screen biographies and religious epics. Some of the titles are John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and early musicals featured Shirley Temple and Betty Gable.
In 1949, 20th Century Fox Television was founded and was a separate company from the film studio. The CinemaScope format was introduced by the company in 1953 and the trend toward the use of wide screens in motion-pictures theatres began.
It was 20th Century-Fox that brought Marilyn Monroe to stardom and popularity during the 1950’s. This was followed by the studio’s most successful musicals of the decade such as The King and I (1956) and South Pacific (1958).
Decade of 1960’s saw the comeback of Zanuck after another financial difficulty of the company due to box office failure Cleopatra (1963). The studio then had commercial success of The Sound of Music (1965) although some several highly expensive flops followed.
1970’s was the decade when 20th Century-Fox produced one of the greatest movies of all time : Star Wars (1977) – later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope. The movie trilogy is one of the most lucrative film series in the history.
In 1981, the Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation was bought by Martin Davis and family and then sold to the international publisher Rupert Murdoch in the year 1985. Later on in 2017 the Disney Company purchased 20th Century Fox with the deal closed two years later at around $71 billion USD.
The company had produced big success for all this time with box office movies like Romancing the Stone (1984); Wall Street (1987); Home Alone (1990); Speed (1994); and Titanic (1997), which was the first film to surpass $1 billion at the global box office; and Cast Away (2000). With addition to some highly popular sequels : Alien, Die Hard and Avatar series.
In television world, 20th Century-Fox begins airing The Simpsons in 1989 and becomes the longest American sitcom followed by The X-Files series in 1993 and emphasized cults of aliens and extraterrestrial believers worldwide.
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