Fox Animation Studios

Fox Animation Studios was a short-lived traditional animation production company, a division of 20th Century Fox, headed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. Fox Animation Studios was located at 2747 East Camelback Road in Phoenix, Arizona (85016).

History

Founding

The department was designed to compete with Walt Disney Feature Animation, which had phenomenal success in the 1990s with the releases of "The Rescuers Down Under", "Beauty and the Beast", "Aladdin", "The Lion King", "Pocahontas", "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", "Enchanted", "Mulan" and "Tarzan". Walt Disney Pictures veterans Bluth and Goldman came to Fox from Sullivan Bluth Studios, which had produced "An American Tail", "The Land Before Time", and both "All Dogs Go To Heaven" and "Rock-a-Doodle", among other films.

Before Don Bluth came to Fox, they released three animated features (, Once Upon a Forest, and The Pagemaster) which weren't by their animated studios and did poorly at the box office. Even before, fox distributed 2 Bakshi features, Wizards (film) and Fire and Ice (1983 film) and by Richard Williams.

Productions and closure

The Fox Animation Studios output was not as the Walt Disney Pictures movies were. Only one of its two theatrical releases, "Anastasia" and "Titan A.E.", made only USD$9,376,845 in its opening weekend—on an estimated budget of $75,000,000—and the studio was shut down as a result. The last film set to be made was going to be an adaptation of Wayne Barlowe's illustrated novel "Barlowe's Inferno"; it was set to be done with near complete CGI.

The only other Fox Animation Studios production was "Bartok the Magnificent", a direct-to-video sequel to the 1997 film of the same name. The studio also did credited clean-up animation on DreamWorks' "The Prince of Egypt". Bluth and Goldman were considered to produce "Ice Age" as a CGI animated film, but passed on the script.

Today, Blue Sky Studios serves as the animation producer for 20th Century Fox. Fox also released Monkeybone in 2001 which is part Live-Action and Stop-Motion. The film was directed by Henry Selick who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach (film) at Walt Disney Pictures. The film was neither a critical nor financial success. Fox later released another traditional animated feature since Titan A.E. called The Simpsons Movie based on the popular long-running TV series on the TV channel Fox.

ee also

*20th Century Fox Animation