Fox Animation Studios was an American traditional 2D hand-drawn cel-animated/CGI production company located in Phoenix, Arizona, and was the former in-house feature animation division of 20th Century Fox. After six years of operation, the studio was shut down on June 26, 2000, ten days after the release of its final film, Titan A.E., and was replaced by Fox's Blue Sky Studios division.
History
Founding
After the financially unsuccessful release of Don Bluth Entertainment-produced film Thumbelina in 1994, animators Don Bluth and Gary Goldman were hired by Bill Mechanic, then-chairman of 20th Century Fox, to create a brand new Fox animation studio. Mechanic and John Matoian, president of Fox Family Films, also brought in Stephen Brain as Senior VP/General Manager to oversee the startup of the studio and run day-to-day operations of the division.
About the studio
The company was designed to compete with Walt Disney Feature Animation, which had phenomenal success during the late 1980s and early 1990s with the releases of films such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. Disney veterans Bluth and Goldman came in 1994 to Fox from Sullivan Bluth Studios, which had produced An American Tail, The Land Before Time, and All Dogs Go To Heaven, among other films. Before Bluth came to Fox, the studio distributed three animated features during the 1990s which were produced by outside studios - ', Once Upon a Forest and The Pagemaster, the last two of which were both commercial and critical failures. Even before, Fox distributed Hugo the Hippo by William Feigenbaum and József Gémes, two Ralph Bakshi features, Wizards and Fire and Ice, as well as ' by Richard Williams. Also, Fox distributed Asterix Conquers America in France and the United Kingdom.
Productions
Fox Animation Studios did not achieve the same level of success as Disney's animated crop, due to increased competition from Pixar and DreamWorks Animation, the declining revenues of the Disney Renaissance, and the rise of computer-generated animation. First theatrical releaseAnastasia found critical and box-office success, but second theatrical release Titan A.E. got mixed reviews and was a costly flop, losing $100 million for 20th Century Fox. Nearly a year before its closure, 20th Century Fox laid off 300 of the nearly 380 people who worked at the Phoenix studio in order to "make films more efficiently."
Shutdown
On June 26, 2000, the studio was shut down after six years of operation, resulting from financial failure and poor problems. Their last film set to be made would have been an adaptation of Wayne Barlowe's illustrated novel Barlowe's Inferno, and it was set to be done entirely with computer animation. Fox Animation Studios' only other productions were the PBS television series Adventures from the Book of Virtues and the direct-to-video spinoff to Anastasia, Bartok the Magnificent, along with sub-contract work for DreamWorks Animation's The Prince of Egypt. Out of all the sequels and spinoffs based on existing Don Bluth properties, Bartok was the only one to actually have Bluth and Goldman as directors. The former headquarters for the studio sat unused and abandoned until it was demolished in 2017. The site is now home to an apartment complex.
