Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
From The Sacred Scrolls
Twentieth Century Fox is a major American film studio located in Century City, California. In the late 1960's, studio head-of-production Richard D. Zanuck (son of veteran Fox founder, Darryl Zanuck) began production of the Planet of the Apes franchise. 20th Century Fox hired Arthur P. Jacobs and his company, APJAC International to produce the first Planet of the Apes movie, released in February 1968. Planet of the Apes provided a huge, much-needed hit for Fox, still reeling from the nearly bankrupting $40 million it spent on Cleopatra five years before. Although it was never intended to spawn a franchise, the film was such a runaway hit, the studio demanded a sequel. Jacobs produced Beneath the Planet of the Apes, which was released in May of 1970. Screenwriter Paul Dehn (with the creative assistance of actor Charlton Heston) crafted the final script to end in such a fashion, so as to prevent future sequels. The movie climaxed with the destruction of the Earth.
Behind the scenes at Fox, tensions were building after Richard Zanuck had, in 1969, replaced his father as president of 20th Century-Fox; Darryl F. Zanuck became chairman of the Fox board but soon felt he had been manipulated and began conspiring against his son. The board-room tensions at Fox finally erupted in December 1970 when Darryl Zanuck got his revenge by humiliating Richard at a board of directors meeting and replaced Richard as president of the company with himself (tiring of Zanuck Sr., the board of directors in turn forced him out in May 1971).
Undeterred by the Apes apocalypse, Fox again demanded a follow-up. Director Don Taylor was brought on board and managed to resurrect a few essential ape characters, while simultaneously working within an extremely truncated budget. Twentieth Century Fox released Escape from the Planet of the Apes in the Spring of 1971. The sequel to Escape, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, was primarily filmed in the newly constructed Century City Shopping Center, across from the back lot of the Twentieth Century Fox studio in Century City, Los Angeles, California. Aware that studio executives would likely demand further film projects, director J. Lee Thompson molded the climax of Conquest to allow for further franchise development. Only one more film was given the green light after the success of Conquest, and Battle for the Planet of the Apes was released on June 15th, 1973.
In 1974, 20th Century Fox's television division produced a short-lived Planet of the Apes television series. With the cancellation of the series in December of that year, 20th Century Fox followed it with a Saturday morning animated series.
In 2001, the studio executives of Twentieth Century Fox, along with luminary Richard Zanuck, produced a re-imagining of the POTA mythos in the Tim Burton directed remake, Planet of the Apes.
[edit] External Links
- 20th Century Fox
- 20th Century Fox Filmography
- APJAC Productions
- Fox Home Entertainment
- The Zanuck Company
