As Disney fine-tunes its purchase of 21st Century Fox and its subsidiaries, things are changing for the film studio.
According to Variety, Fox’s Fox 2000 label will not be making the move over to Disney, even after it was previously announced that its head Elizabeth Gabel would stay on board after Disney acquired the company.
However, it seems that Disney is committed to completing the label’s films currently in production. Fox 2000 has produced several profitable films, including The Fault in Our Stars, Life of Pi, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and has several new films in the works. New projects include League of Wives from Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine media company, an adaptation of Angie Thomas’ (The Hate U Give) second novel, an adaption of novelist Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone, and a Tom Hanks-led Civil War period piece titled News of the World.
The news of the label’s closure coincides with Disney’s layoffs of many of Fox’s senior staff yesterday, although reportedly no one at Fox 2000 was let go during this announcement. Staffers, including Domestic Distribution Chief Chris Aronson, International Distribution Chief Andrew Cripps, Chief Content Officer Tony Salla, and Twentieth Television President Greg Meidel, were among those let go as a result of the Mouse House merger.
Considering this $71.3 billion merger has been in the works for more than a year, company restructuring and layoffs are hardly surprising. However, word that several of Fox’s film executives would be laid off still left many emotional, according to Variety.
This first wave of terminations seems to be resigned to the film side, as many of the top executives were let go; however, reports indicate that more layoffs could occur as the companies merge.
Photo: Etienne Laurent/EPA-EFE/Rex/Shutterstock
