Quote:
Originally Posted by TV2693
Ughh disney, they would never allow an interesting curio like 'Wellness' get made.
|
20th Century Studios has gone downhill. Sure
Skull as a
Predator follow-up might be fun but they won't be taking risks on non-IP titles, except for Searchlight -
Summer of Soul, The Night House were festival acquisitions, and
The Eyes of Tammy Faye will be distributed through Searchlight but I don't think they produced or financed it.
The Mouse Guard was cancelled after a year of preproduction was complete and a week before it was going to start shooting, Fox 2000 was closed (despite notable films in recent years like
Hidden Figures and
Love Simon, which got its own Hulu spin-off, originally set up at Disney+ before they decided it was too adult for them) and
Nimona was cancelled and Blue Sky (who also had several other films in development) shut down after 75% of the film was complete and a year before release - though Disney claimed they would be reallocating animators at Blue Sky to Feature Animation, I don't think this is entirely true. There was a Reddit post detailing a list of about 200 films Fox had in development (though I think some were in development hell) which were all cancelled.
There have been many job losses, with Emma Watts departing as VP of Fox over to Paramount where Paramount Players are attached to
On the Come Up - the follow-up to
The Hate U Give which had originally been set up at Fox 2000. Similarly, a film adaptation of
Spamalot was stalled and has now moved over to Paramount. Another film set up at Fox was an adaptation of The Daily Beast article about the McDonalds Monopoly scam, there's been a HBO documentary
McMillion$ but no narrative film. Disney has screwed over Noelle Stevenson twice, with Fox's live action adaptation of
Lumberjanes cancelled by Disney, but has now been set up as a animated series on HBO Max.
At the same time, they've been selling off the rights to many of their films -
The Woman in the Window, the last Fox 2000 film, went over to Netflix;
Everybody's Talking About Jamie was sold to Prime Video and will now be misleadingly released as an "Amazon Original; in the UK,
Wendy didn't get a release last year, and has now been sold to distributor start-up Elysian (who released
Earwig and the Witch in May) for a cinema release next month.
Fear Street has been successful on Netflix, but it was originally going to be released theatrically over three years by Fox, until the production company shifted their output deal over to Netflix.
It also means that several 4K restorations that were in progress such as
The Iron Horse were cancelled. MGM and Pathe had their physical distribution through Fox, but they've now moved over to WB. There was a time without 4K releases though they've started up again with
Home Alone, Speed, Heat, Alien series released or strongly rumoured (already on the shelf 4K masters), and international several titles are in 4K on Disney+ Star like
There's Something About Mary, though who knows about a physical release. At the same time a lot of their 4K releases of cinema releases from the past five years appear to be going OOP. Fox Home Entertainment was also laid off and has been folded into Buena Vista/Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, and their titles included in the same offers Disney titles end up in. Titles going OOP has also affected many of the UK's back catalogue titles too -
Romancing the Stone, How Green is My Valley, Twelve O'Clock High, An Affair to Remember, Titanic (1953) and others. At the same time, recent titles like
Downhill, A Hidden Life, Underwater have been released only on Blu-ray or DVD in select territories, without many extras, with
The Empty Man, a film available on streaming/VOD in 4K UHD, has only received a DVD release to Redbox and in Australia, and
Wendy getting no physical release at all. Fox consistently put even smaller box office performers on 4K UHD, but titles like
Ready or Not and
Nomadland have been confined to Blu-ray.
They've stopped licensing to labels, though Criterion has some Fox titles coming out (likely having been licensed years ago) and though Signal One has had issues they should have some coming too. Eureka limited their Fuller single releases to 2000 copies as they knew they wouldn't have the license for long - and apparently they went down to 2 year licenses not 5 years. Fox's refusal to license has had effects, with Arrow unable to release a 4K UHD of
Legend as they refused to sign off the international cut of the film (which has the best elements available).
Even other forms of licensing have moved in-house - so
Alien comic books moved other from Dark Horse to Marvel, with crossover comic covers with superheroes. Though some Fox titles are still published by BOOM! who Fox and now Disney have a stake in (despite the fact Fox cancelled numerous BOOM! adaptations, with only
The Empty Man being released out of this.)
To Disney, Fox is an IP farm so they can do
Alien for FX and bolster their streaming library and TV deals. With the Hulu takeover (the other stakes in Hulu were sold), FX on Hulu, National Geographic films/series released on Disney+ like
The Right Stuff and
Playing with Sharks, and releasing Searchlight titles to Disney+ like
Nomadland and
Summer of Soul around the same time as the theatrical release, streaming is the focus. Even
The Simpsons has become an IP farm, with mini-episodes crossing over with
Star Wars and
Loki used to promote their streaming library. In the UK, the linear Fox and FX broadcast channels were shut down, with the only option for many shows now being Disney+ Star only. Not only did Disney get Hulu, they also got a larger stake in VICE than they had previously.
Though I'm not sure if it's affected the UK as several older Fox titles have hit cinemas near me in the past year or so like
Predator, Alien, Home Alone, Die Hard, Jingle All the Way, Moulin Rouge, MZS did an article about repertory theaters being denied access to Fox titles, except for
The Rocky Horror Picture Show which has a longstanding tradition of midnight showings - similar to the Disney Vault concept where they did select film reissues every 7 years or so but then made them unavailable on VHS so they could remain special.
Disney has used the merger as an excuse to be greedy - notably refusing to give Alan Dean Foster (and other novelists too I believe) royalty payments for his novelisations of Fox films, until a lawsuit and articles online called Disney out for this. In another case, Jim and John Thomas filed termination rights over the Predator series after 35 years, but 20th Century shot their own lawsuit back against them and it's very much still up in the air. The loss of the century old Fox name, though used to dissociate the company from Fox News and the TV channel which is still separate (producing/airing some of its own new shows under the Fox name but also still airing some 20th Century Studios shows), is also an example of Disney taking more control of 20th Century and their agreements from what I understand - so 20th Century Fox's 20% stake in Regency Entertainment transferred over to Walt Disney Studios.
Most of their theatrical releases in the year after the merger besides
Ford v Ferrari (right before the pandemic) struggled, with
The New Mutants and
The Empty Man finally slipping out to theaters during the pandemic, a strategy of giving up than having confidence in making money on the films - with many other Fox titles in development before the merger sitting on the shelf ready to be released in late 2021/2022, like
Free Guy, Death on the Nile, The French Dispatch, Deep Water, The King's Man.
Ron's Gone Wrong looks like an embarrassment for them, hitting on the same day as several other big films, and with the trailer I saw in the cinema sans any studio logo - and Locksmith has moved their distribution of future films over to WB. But with so many other big Disney releases I don't think they gave their full attention to marketing films like
Dark Phoenix, A Hidden Life, Underwater, Downhill that didn't really turn a profit. In the UK, a film like
Lucy in the Sky or
A Hidden Life barely even got a cinema release, playing 100 screens or so and I don't think many places had it booked for even a week, some only doing one-off showings.
Ultimately, had Rupert Murdoch not been greedy and instead had a heart (he got a healthy sum for the sale), and were antitrust laws actually being enforced, and perhaps if people didn't view Disney with rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia for childhood and the excitement of Marvel fans at the prospect of X-Men fighting Avengers, this entire situation could have been avoided.
Though if we're to provide some positives, all the Star Wars films can appear in one boxset, Australia released a Robin Williams triple with Touchstone and Fox titles, and I could understand somebody wanting all three Narnia films in one place on Disney+.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TripleHBK
Disney Purchased 20th Century Fox in 2019. All Fox titles have slowly sold through their remaining stock as Disney took control of the Library. Certain major franchises have remained in print and always will but much of what Fox owned was allowed to fall out of print while Disney figured out what to do with things. It's a wise idea to buy any/all Fox titles you want if they aren't a major franchise as it's unknown whether Disney will ever press them to disc again.
|
It should be noted that some are available through the Disney Movie Club website, but now bearing the 20th Century Studios name on the spine and back covers. Other Fox titles like
The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Die Hard, Home Alone, Miracle on 34th Street have also been reissued, now bearing the Disney cover template and the 20th Century Studios logo on the spine and the back.
Quote:
Originally Posted by StopSnitchinStopLyin
Wrong they also regained rights to the first movie in the US
|
So would this make releasing a 4K UHD more complicated?
All countries
Argentina
Austria
Belgium
Brazil
Bulgaria
Chile
China
Colombia
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Estonia
Denmark
Finland
Greece
Hong Kong
Hungary
Iceland
Indonesia
Ireland
Israel
India
Latvia
Lithuania
Malaysia
New Zealand
Norway
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Russia
Singapore
South Africa
South Korea
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
Linear Mode
