March 20, 2019 will forever be a historic day in Hollywood history due to the finalizing of the Disney-Fox merger. The Mouse House has officially acquired 20th Century Fox, one of the original major motion picture studios whose output came to define the film market for adults. The end of 20th Century Fox is the end of a major era in Hollywood, and IndieWire honors the studio with 40 films that best define its legacy.
Before the creation of 20th Century Fox in 1935, the Fox Film Corporation earned their first Best Picture Oscar nomination with Frank Borzage’s silent romance “7th Heaven.” The film picked up honors for Best Actress (Janet Gaynor), Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, all at the 1st Academy Awards.
John Ford started the 1940s with a successful partnership with 20th Century Fox. The director’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel would win him his second Oscar for Best Director. Starring Henry Fonda as Tom Joad, the adaptation is widely considered one of the best American films ever made.
John Ford’s lucrative partnership with 20th Century Fox continued with “How Green Was My Valley” in 1941. The drama about a Welsh mining factory earned 10 Academy Award nominations and famously beat Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” for Best Picture. Ford won his third (of four) Best Director Oscars.
Henry Fonda’s career with 20th Century Fox also included “The Ox-Bow Incident,” an arthouse American western from director William A. Wellman. The film was a notorious flop for Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck but was an early indicator of the studio’s appreciation for dramatic visions over easy sells. The movie was nominated for Best Picture.
One year after RKO Pictures delivered a Christmas movie landmark with “It’s a Wonderful Life,” director George Seaton gave Fox its own holiday classic with “Miracle on 34th Street.” The film was nominated for Best Picture and won three Oscars, including Best Supporting Actor for Edmund Gwenn.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “All About Eve” made 20th Century Fox the crown jewel of Oscar players when it nabbed a record 14 Academy Award nominations and won six prizes, including Best Picture. The drama is the first film to earn nominations in all six major Oscar categories: Director, Picture, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress.
Paul Newman delivered one of his most iconic performances as “Fast” Eddie Felson in Fox’s “The Hustler,” directed and co-written by Robert Rossen. Newman was nominated for Best Actor, while both the film and Rossen received nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, respectively.
Fox was the king of movies in 1965 thanks to “The Sound of Music,” director Robert Wise’s adaptation of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. The film was the year’s top grosser at the box office and the Best Picture winner, among four other Academy Awards.
Paul Newman and Robert Redford in “Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid” gave 20th Century Fox perhaps the most legendary pairing of its entire history. William Goldman’s script is loosely based on the real lives of two Wild West outlaws. The film was a Best Picture and Best Director nominee.
“Patton,” co-written by Francis Ford Coppola and directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, infamously resulted in George C. Scott’s Best Actor win at the Oscars. (The film also won Best Picture.) During the ceremony, Scott refused to accept the prize because he did not agree with the concept of pitting actors against each other. He was the first actor in history not to accept his Oscar.
Along with “Patton,” Robert Altman’s counterculture classic “Mash” started off the 1970s on a huge note for Fox. The movie won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and earned five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. The film made over 25 times its budget at the box office, making it one of the most profitable movies of the decade.
Fox challenged the newly-created MPAA with the release of William Friedkin’s violent crime thriller “The French Connection.” The film became the first R-rated movie to win Best Picture and proved Fox was willing to put a hefty support system behind uncensored directorial efforts.
Fox changed movie history with the release of George Lucas’ “Star Wars,” which became the highest grossing movie ever released until it was surpassed by “E.T.” in 1982. To this day, “Star Wars” remains the second highest grossing film in the U.S. when adjusted for inflation with over $1.6 billion made domestically.
“All That Jazz” ended Fox’s stellar 1970s on a critical high, confirming in the wake of the blockbuster era being enshrined by “Star Wars” that the studio was still committed to challenging artistic visions. The Bob Fosse-directed autobiographical musical made fans out of such film icons as Stanley Kubrick and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
Two years after “Star Wars,” Fox returned to space in a much darker way with the release of Ridley Scott’s “Alien.” The film was the start of not only a successful new film franchise, but it was also the beginning of an extremely profitable relationship between the studio and Scott. “Alien” won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects.
Peter Yates’ inspirational sports comedy “Breaking Away” is a relatively minor film in the grand scale of Fox’s history, but it shows just how well the studio could maximize the success of even the smallest movies. The film was nominated for Best Picture and won Best Original Screenplay.
Fox’s major success in 1979 continued with “Norma Rae,” Martin Ritt’s drama starring Sally Field as a factory worker who becomes the leader of a labor union where she works. Field won Best Actress at Cannes before going on to win the Oscar in the same category.
Paul Newman continued to be one of Fox’s most bankable stars in the 1980s with the release of Sidney Lumet’s “The Verdict.” The critically acclaimed courtroom drama tripled its budget at the box office and was nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor.
The 1980s was a time of great success at Fox for mid-budget adult dramas. John Huston’s “Prizzi’s Honor” nearly doubled its budget at the box office in 1985 thanks to the star power of Jack Nicholson and Kathleen Turner. Anjelica Huston won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
James L. Brooks delivered one of the funniest movies of the decade with “Broadcast News,” powered by Oscar-nominated performances from Holly Hunter, Albert Brooks, and William Hurt. The film, about a love triangle that forms among a news producer and two rival reporters, continued a hot streak for Brooks after “Terms of Endearment.”
Before the blockbuster curve of the 1990s, Mike Nichols’ “Working Girl” ended Fox’s decade with another hugely successful adult romantic-comedy. The studio earned over $100 million on the film and scored Best Picture, Best Actress (Melanie Griffith) and two Best Supporting Actress nominations (Sigourney Weaver, Joan Cusack), among others.
John Hughes and Chris Columbus kicked off the 1990s on a blockbuster note for 20th Century Fox with the release of “Home Alone.” The Macaulay Culkin-starring Christmas comedy was an instant smash hit, earning $476 million worldwide on an $18 million budget and launching a new Fox franchise.
Chris Columbus gave Fox another family blockbuster with “Mrs. Doubtfire.” Even with Robin Williams in the lead role, the family comedy over-performed with a giant $441 million worldwide opposite a $25 million budget. The hugely profitable film was the second highest grossing title in the U.S. in 1993 and remains one of the decade’s most enduring comedies.
The industry began to lean into action tentpoles more aggressively following the success of Universal’s “Jurassic Park,” and thus Fox gambled big on Roland Emmerich’s alien invasion movie “Independence Day.” The film launched Will Smith into superstardom and grossed over $817.4 million worldwide, becoming the biggest hit of 1996 and the second-highest-grossing film worldwide ever at the time. The film’s success proved Fox had what it takes to be a major tentpole player.
Fox co-produced James Cameron’s behemoth “Titanic” with Paramount Pictures, releasing the film internationally to the tune of over $2 billion. The epic romance starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet was a massive financial success for both companies and solidified the Fox-Cameron parternship as the king of the world (their other hits included “Aliens,” “True Lies,” and “The Abyss”).
In the midst of a growing blockbuster craze, Fox kept cinephiles happy by giving auteur favorite Terrence Malick a $50 million budget to make his WWII epic “The Thin Red Line.” The film was not as profitable as the studio wanted it to be (it did not cross $100 million), but it landed seven Oscar nominations and once again confirmed Fox’s commitment to bringing challenging directorial voices to the screen.
While Sony’s “Spider-Man” often gets credited with starting the superhero movie boom, it was actually 20th Century Fox that got the ball rolling with the release of “X-Men” in 2000. The release would jumpstart one of the most profitable franchises in Fox’s history and make household names out of Hugh Jackman and Halle Berry.
Robert Zemeckis’s “Cast Away” earned more than double what “X-Men” grossed at the worldwide box office. Tom Hanks’ star power and an Oscar nomination for Best Actor propelled the adult survival drama to $429 million at the worldwide box office.
Putting Baz Luhrmann in the driver’s seat for a big-budget jukebox musical paid off for Fox with “Moulin Rouge!” Starring Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, the film become a crossover hit in both the film and music worlds (the smash single “Lady Marmalade”) on its way to eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
With Pixar and DreamWorks dominating the animation space, Fox decided to get in on the game with the release of the prehistoric buddy comedy “Ice Age.” Featuring the voices of Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, and Denis Leary, the movie turned out to be a $383 million worldwide hit that launched Fox’s most lucrative animated franchise. The “Ice Age” films were never critical favorites, but they were reliable box office draws for family audiences.
20th Century Fox’s indie division Fox Searchlight is luckily staying intact under the Disney-Fox merger, which is good news for cinephiles since Searchlight has been behind such indie gems as Alexander Payne’s “Sideways.”
The Russell Crowe-starring “Master and Commander” was a 10-time Oscar nominee for Fox, picking up awards for Best Cinematography and Best Sound Editing. Most importantly, it was a costly endeavor (it only made $212 million on a $150 million budget) that signaled to the company big-budget movies without large built-in fanbases (see “The Lord of the Rings”) would be incredibly risky in the years ahead.
While Fox struggled to launch franchises for adults (see “Master and Commander”), the studio found great success with family audiences thanks to its “Night at the Museum” franchise. The Ben Stiller-starring fantasy comedy series launched in 2006 with a first installment that cleared the half-billion mark at the worldwide box office.
James Cameron delivered again for Fox with “Avatar,” the 3D science-fiction epic that remains the highest grossing film ever released, with $2.78 billion worldwide. With multiple sequels planned and two already shot, the “Avatar” series will be one of the biggest acquisitions under the Disney-Fox merger.
Daniel Day-Lewis won the Best Actor Oscar for his leading turn in Steven Spielberg’s critically adored “Lincoln.” Fox had long triumphed at the box office when releasing auteur projects, which made pairing with Spielberg a no-brainer for the studio. Fox released “Lincoln” internationally, with Disney handling domestic rights. The film earned $275 million worldwide and 12 Oscar nominations.
After back-to-back misses with “The Counselor” and “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” Fox and Ridley Scott rebounded in a huge way with “The Martian.” The Matt Damon-starring Mars survival movie earned over $600 million worldwide and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Actor. The movie brought Scott back into prominence and proved why Fox was smart to always take a chance on the director.
Fox again teamed with Disney to jointly distribute Steven Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies,” with the former taking international rights to the project. The movie won Mark Rylance the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, one of six nominations it received.
While Fox will always be associated with the “X-Men” movies, the risk they took on “Deadpool” might be their more game-changing superhero decision. In taking a chance on a raunchy, hard R-rated superhero release, Fox not only launched a new franchise to the tune of $783 million worldwide but proved audiences were craving new ideas in the tentpole space. A year later, Fox would release the R-rated “Logan” to similar success.
Despite attention on blockbuster franchises, Fox never lost sight of its bread and butter: the mid-budget adult drama. The studio again hit it out of the park with the release of “Hidden Figures,” which starred Taraji P. Henson as pioneering NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson. The movie was widely celebrated by critics and grossed $236 million worldwide on a $25 million budget.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” did not impress movie critics, but it did stun the world with nearly $880 million worldwide, making it the top grossing music biopic ever released. With four Oscars under its belt, including Best Actor for Rami Malek, it was also the most winning film at the 2019 ceremony. As a whole, “Rhapsody” was the perfect swan song for Fox, a studio that knew how to make films for adults and turn them into worldwide hits.