Disney is officially striking of the “Fox” branding from all Fox-related studio assets that it had acquired the year before. Effectively immediately, 20th Century Fox will simply be known as 20th Century Studios, while Fox Searchlight Pictures will become Searchlight Pictures.
Disney is also making the necessary adjustments on an internal level; Variety says that the company has begun phasing out the “Fox” name from staff email addresses. In the case of Searchlight Pictures, email addresses with “fox.com” were quickly replaced with “searchlightpictures.com” addresses.
The decision by Disney to remove all references to the Fox name doesn’t come as a surprise to industry insiders. Since the House of Mouse acquired 21st Century Fox from the Fox Corporation last year to a sum of US$71.3 billion (~RM289 billion). Mind you, the acquisition only includes the film and TV studios, but not the Fox broadcast network or Fox News.
Of course, another unspoken reason behind Disney’s decision to erase the Fox name could simply be that it wants to distance itself as far away as possible from 20th Century Picture’s previous owner, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. As one insider commented on the matter, “I think the Fox names means Murdoch, and that is toxic”.
(Source: Variety)
