20th Century Studios, Inc., formerly Twentieth Century Fox (commonly referred to as Fox), is an American film production and distribution company owned by the Walt Disney Studios, the film studios division of the Disney Entertainment business segment of the Walt Disney Company. It was headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles, until its lease with Fox Corporation ended and it was relocated to the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distributes and markets the films produced by this studio in theatrical markets.
For 90 years, 20th Century has been one of the major American film studios. It was founded on May 31, 1935 as Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation by the merger of Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures, and one of the original "Big Five" among eight majors of Hollywood's Golden Age. In 1985, the studio removed the hyphen in the name (becoming Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation) after being acquired by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which was renamed 21st Century Fox in 2013 after it spun off its publishing assets. Disney purchased most of 21st Century Fox's assets, which included 20th Century Fox, on March 20, 2019. The studio adopted its current name on January 17, 2020, in order to avoid confusion with Fox Corporation, and subsequently started to use it for the copyright of 20th Century and Searchlight Pictures productions on December 4. 20th Century is currently one of five live-action film studios within the Walt Disney Studios, alongside Walt Disney Pictures, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, and its sister speciality unit, Searchlight Pictures. 20th Century also releases animated films produced by its animation division, 20th Century Animation.
