NEW YORK -- Disney is dropping the word "Fox" from the movie studios it acquired as part of last year's $71 billion purchase of Fox's entertainment business, according to published reports.
Disney will still run them as separate studios within the company. But trade publication Variety reported that 20th Century Fox will become 20th Century Studios, while Fox Searchlight Pictures will be Searchlight Pictures. Variety said the studios' logos are largely unchanged except for the removal of the Fox name.
Variety said the Fox name created brand confusion with Disney because Fox News and the Fox broadcast network are owned by Rupert Murdoch's Fox Corp., while the movie studios now belong to Disney.
The news outlet said a decision has yet to be made on Disney's Fox television production businesses, 20th Century Fox Television and Fox 21 Television Studio.
Disney representatives did not return messages requesting comment.
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.
While Disney had made cuts in staff at the former Fox studio, it is still releasing the acquired company's films.
The new branding will appear on upcoming releases Downhill, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell, and Call of the Wild, starring Harrison Ford.
Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press, by Brooks Barnes of The New York Times and by Christopher Palmeri of Bloomberg News.
Business on 01/18/2020