Awhile back it was announced that Disney had purchased 20th Century Fox in one of the biggest film company mergers in recent memory, a deal that gave Disney access to a lot of Fox’s film assets. Now it has just been reported that the Mouse is actively working to phase out the Fox name from its recently acquired movie studios. There have been reports that Disney has been removing the word “Fox” from company email addresses and movie posters.
According to Variety, Disney is changing the name of Fox Searchlight Pictures to Searchlight Pictures, and 20th Century Fox will now be called 20th Century Studios, which is weird because if they are already changing the name why don’t they just call it 21st Century Studios. As of right now, it has not been confirmed whether Disney has plans to change any of the Fox television studios like 20th Century Fox Television and Fox 21 Television Studios, but name changes for the movie studios have been confirmed. There are also plans to change these studio logos as well.
Sources at Deadline believe that the reason Disney is so eager to remove the Fox name from the studio is because the family friendly conglomerate does not want to be associated with or confused for Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. We will keep you updated for more info.