The 20th Century Fox Story (2000-2009)

Despite entering a new millennium, 20th Century Fox opted to keep its iconic name. A separate label called Fox 2000 Pictures had been established during the 1990's to co-produce most of the movies from TCF and Fox Searchlight Pictures but it never had an official onscreen logo of its own so all of its movies continued to open with either the TCF or Fox Searchlight logos. Fox's first big blockbuster of the new decade was "X-Men" (2000), a feature film adaptation of the long running Marvel Comics series. It single handedly revived the comic book/superhero movie genre after "Batman & Robin" (Warner Bros., 1997) had previously killed it and its success set the stage for the superhero movie boom that continues to be very profitable at the box office to this day. The success of "X-Men" and its sequels would also foreshadow Fox's eventual fate just short of 20 years later when it would cease to exist as its own independent studio.

Fox's attempt to follow up on the success of "Anastasia" (1997) with the same production team's "Titan A.E." (2000) flopped. The fact that it was traditionally animated in a new era for animation when companies like Pixar and DreamWorks were making big money off of their computer animated productions may have been the biggest factor in its failure. A computer animation company called Blue Sky Studios set up a deal with Fox to release their comedy "Ice Age" (2002). It was a huge hit that would launch another successful long running franchise and would prove to the other major studios that computer animation was here to stay. Within a decade, all the other studios founded their own computer animation departments to compete with Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks (though ironically, Fox themselves would eventually become one of several distributors for DreamWorks' animated output). Like with anything else though, computer animation can be very "hit or miss" and traditional animation can still occasionally succeed at the box office depending on the story/characters. A case in point of this theory is Blue Sky's follow up "Robots" (2005) falling short of expectations (and failing to launch their next potential franchise), other companies' "Everyone's Hero" (2006) and "Space Chimps" (2008) flopping entirely and Fox having a solid box office hit in the form of the traditionally animated "The Simpsons Movie" (2007), the long awaited feature film adaptation of the studio's very long running (already with over 700 episodes and counting) television series.

Even though Fox Searchlight was getting all the awards glory now (Reese Witherspoon won the only major Oscar for a TCF film for the entire decade with 2005's "Walk the Line"), the entire 2000's was still very profitable for 20th Century Fox. Several additional new franchises would begin their runs during this decade including the eagerly anticipated onscreen pairing of "Alien" and "Predator", "Big Momma's House", "The Transporter", "Cheaper by the Dozen", "Garfield", "Fantastic Four" (also based on a Marvel Comics series), "Night at the Museum", "Alvin and the Chipmunks" and "Taken" (which did for Liam Neeson what "Die Hard" did for Bruce Willis 20 years earlier). Meanwhile, some others like "Behind Enemy Lines", "Dr. Dolittle", "Joy Ride", "Like Mike", "Wrong Turn", "The Marine", "12 Rounds" and the aforementioned "Garfield" would release their first one or two movies to theaters before Fox would follow the example previously set by companies like Disney and Universal by releasing subsequent sequels straight to video/DVD. Only the theatrically released installments are listed here, of course. However, one movie, released towards the very end of the decade, would outdo them all in terms of critical and commercial praise and box office profits. James Cameron, who had not directed a film since "Titanic" (1997) finally released his new ambitious epic: "Avatar" (2009). The nearly three hour science fiction adventure broke the records that Fox and Cameron themselves had set with "Titanic" by becoming the new highest grossing movie of all time. In just a little over 30 years, Fox would receive that honor three times, having done so for the first time back in 1977 with "Star Wars." As the studio prepared to celebrate its 75th anniversary, probably no one in the industry could have imagined that the occasion would also mark the beginning of its end. The Walt Disney Company, eager to get their hands on Fox's many profitable franchises, would start circling.

All of Fox's theatrical releases for the 2000's are present and accounted for here. There's plenty of big hits, guilty pleasures and some embarrassing flops listed throughout.

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