It's been ages since this thread was updated, but a pretty big news bombshell dropped yesterday: Disney is dropping "Fox" from the division's name, rebranding as "20th Century Studios" and "Searchlight Pictures."
https://variety.com/2020/film/news/disney-dropping-fox-20th-century-studios-1203470349/
I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise at all, but after all the hoops that the studios jumped through to rebrand the TV outlets (the ones that weren't part of the merger) as "New Fox," I thought the reasoning was Disney's intent to also keep the name instead of just the library.
At that rate, why not just call it "21st Century Studios," since the newly formed division came into being during this century, and will no longer even have any nominal ties with the studio that William Fox founded in 1935?
It's actually a slight step
up from what I imagined, as it was possible that Disney would take the assets it wanted (Star Wars, X-Men, Simpsons) and simply close up shop on the Fox division after the few films that were already too far along in production wrapped up. Apparently, they're still keeping the division active in some sense, probably for R-rated movies like potential new installments in the
Alien and
Die Hard franchises. (
Deadpool 3 is also reportedly in the works.) Since Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures have all but vanished from the face of the planet, this seems like the likely new outlet for such fare.
At any rate, it is what it is. It's a little sad, but it was also sad for me when Hasbro stopped putting "Kenner" on Star Wars action figures. But Hasbro had already bought Kenner several years prior, so it didn't really matter. The new name just acknowledges what we already know happened.