Portal:20th Century Studios

The 20th Century Studios Portal

Entrance to the studio lot of 20th Century Studios in Century City, California

20th Century Studios, Inc. is an American film studio owned by the Walt Disney Studios, a division of Disney Entertainment, in turn a division of The Walt Disney Company. It is headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles, leased from Fox Corporation. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distributes and markets the films produced by 20th Century Studios in theatrical markets.

For over 80 years, 20th Century was one of the major American film studios. It was formed in 1935 as Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation by the merger of Fox Film 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 as a trade 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.

The most commercially successful film series from 20th Century Studios include the first six Star Wars films, X-Men, Ice Age, Avatar, and Planet of the Apes. Additionally, the studio's library includes many individual films such as Titanic and The Sound of Music, both of which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and became the highest-grossing films of all time during their initial releases. (Full article...)

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Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones is a 2002 American epic space opera film directed by George Lucas and written by Lucas and Jonathan Hales. The sequel to The Phantom Menace (1999), it is the fifth film in the Star Wars film series and second chronological chapter of the "Skywalker Saga". The film stars Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, and Frank Oz.

The story is set ten years after The Phantom Menace, as thousands of planetary systems slowly secede from the Galactic Republic and join the newly-formed Confederacy of Independent Systems, led by former Jedi Master Count Dooku. With the galaxy on the brink of civil war, Obi-Wan Kenobi investigates a mysterious assassination attempt on Senator Padmé Amidala, which leads him to uncover a clone army in service of the Republic and the truth behind the Separatist movement. Meanwhile, his apprentice Anakin Skywalker is assigned to protect Amidala and develops a secret relationship with her. Soon, the trio witness the onset of a new threat to the galaxy: the Clone Wars.

Development of Attack of the Clones began in March 2000, some months after the release of The Phantom Menace. By June 2000, Lucas and Hales completed a draft of the script, and principal photography took place from June to September 2000. The film crew primarily shot at Fox Studios Australia in Sydney, Australia, with additional footage filmed in Tunisia, Spain, and Italy. It was one of the first motion pictures shot completely on a high-definition digital 24-frame system.

The film was released in the United States on May 16, 2002. It received mixed reviews, with some critics hailing it as an improvement over its predecessor The Phantom Menace and others considering it the worst installment of the franchise. The film was praised for an increased emphasis on action, visual effects, musical score, and costume design, but criticized for the screenplay, Christensen's performance, romantic scenes, and underdeveloped characters.

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Credit: Andre Carrotflower

As seen in June 2020: the Streamline Moderne-style building at 290 Franklin Street in downtown Buffalo, New York was built in 1937 by the Twentieth Century Fox company to house their local film exchange, i.e. a sort of receiving and distribution center where films sourced from the main studio would be screened for local theater owners and offered for rent, and where advertising posters and other promotional material was made available to movie houses. The construction was considered state-of-the-art at the time; architecturally speaking, it's today considered the best preserved of the eight extant such facilities in Buffalo's "Film Row" along the 200 block of Franklin Street. Distinguishing characteristics include horizontal stone band courses narrowly spaced along the buff-brick façade above the ground floor, and a recessed entrance with curved corners flanked at ground level by Art Deco-redolent, stylized reliefs of tragedy and comedy masks. The building continued functioning as a film exchange until at least 1959; it was used for offices thereafter and is now vacant.

These images are from 20th Century Studios articles.

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Sir Ridley Scott (born 30 November 1937) is an English film director and producer. He has directed, among others, the science fiction films Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982) and The Martian (2015), the road crime film Thelma & Louise (1991), the historical drama film Gladiator (2000), and the war film Black Hawk Down (2001).

Scott began his career in television as a designer and director before moving into advertising, where he honed his filmmaking skills by making inventive mini-films for television commercials. He made his debut as a film director with The Duellists (1977) and gained wider recognition with his next film, Alien. His work is known for its atmospheric and highly concentrated visual style. Though his films range widely in setting and period, they frequently showcase memorable imagery of urban environments, spanning 2nd-century Rome in Gladiator, 12th-century Jerusalem in Kingdom of Heaven (2005), Medieval England in Robin Hood (2010), contemporary Mogadishu in Black Hawk Down, or the futuristic cityscapes of Blade Runner and distant planets in Alien, Prometheus (2012), Alien: Covenant (2017), and The Martian. Several of his films are also known for their strong female characters. In 2021, his films The Last Duel and House of Gucci were released.

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You have a strong heart. No fear – but stupid! Ignorant, like a child.
Neytiri, to Jake Sully, Avatar (2009)

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