The Fox Film Corporation (one of the two film companies who merged to make 20th Century Fox) was formed in 1915 by the theatre chain pioneer William Fox who formed Fox Film Corporation by merging two companies he had established in 1913: Greater New York Film Rental, a distribution firm, which was part of the Independents; and Fox (or Box, depending on the source) Office Attractions Company, a production company, this is called vertical integration and was one of the first times that it had been done. Fox Film Corporation then merged with Twentieth Century Pictures which was a Hollywood motion picture production company and was created in 1933 by Joseph Shneck, Darryl F. Zanuck from Warner Brothers, William Goetz from Fox Films and Raymond Griffith. In 1935, Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures agreed to a merger and Spyros Skouras who at the time was manager of Fox- West Coast, helped in the merger and eventually became president of the new company. Although it was much smaller than Fox at the time, Twentieth Century was the senior partner in the merger, at first, it was expected that the new company would be called Fox-Twentieth Century however an agreement was made on the name “Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation”, and they began trading on May 31 1935, the hyphen was dropped in 1985.
20th Century Fox for many years was a privately held company meaning they were owned by non-governmental organizations or share holders and all their trading was done privately. Then in 1985, the two owners at the time, Marc Rich and Marvin Davis, fled the USA after evading $100 million in U.S. income taxes and as a result sold their halves of the company to Rupert Murdoch’s multi-media conglomerate News Corporation, there was a six month gap between Rich and Davis selling their halves of Fox to News Corp meaning for those six months, News Corp only owned half of the company but now fully own it. To run the studio, Murdoch hired Barry Diller from Paramount. Diller brought a plan with him which Paramount's board had refused, it was a studio-backed, fourth television network that was financed by advertising. It is believed that 20th Century Fox was actually founded in 1915 and although the company itself revealed the found date to be May 31 1935, most historians agree it was 1915. The first film produced by 20th Century Fox would be “Regeneration” if the company were formed in 1915. Regeneration is a silent film from 1915 and one of the few films from that era that were not lost. If they were founded in 1935, their first film would have been Dante’s Inferno. As a result of Fox being a subsidiary of News Corporation, on numerous occasions, 20th Century Fox’s sister company Fox Broadcasting Company has received criticism and their news channel Fox News has been accused of media bias on many occasions. 20th Century Fox film company has never really been criticised though, it’s been said that its future may be in doubt however due to the recent News Corporation phone hacking scandal but it is supposedly much better off than News Corp’s other holdings. 20th Century Fox has a few other sister companies which are mainly TV based including: 20th Century Fox Television, 20th Century Fox TV Studios, Fox Broadcasting Studios and others of which are all owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation
I think 20th Century Fox are a very good film company and have produced some films of really good quality over the years, they’ve become successful enough to get some major actors to play in their films and raised a lot of money through these films. They are one of the best film companies in the world and have made some of my favourite films in the past.
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