During their quarterly earnings call yesterday, Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed new details about the company’s plans for the newly acquired 20th Century Fox studio and their plans for the studio’s output moving forward.
“The Fox studio performance…was well below where it had been and well below where we’d hoped it would be when we made the acquisition,” Iger said (via THR), citing a $170 million loss by the studio (specifically due to the flop Dark Phoenix).
Iger went on to say that Disney Studios co-chairmen Alan Horn & Alan Bergman and Fox’s Emma Watts are working on the release calendar for the studio, preparing to “consolidate and to cut back on the number of releases so as to focus on the kind of release that we hope would come out of that studio.”
Which brings us to their release pattern. The Hollywood Reporter mentions that sources say the studio could release 10 or more movies a year once the kinks are worked out, but that “half or more” of those releases could open on the Disney+ streaming service or Hulu (a distinction likely centered around the film’s content).
This number of releases in a year is on par or slightly below with how many films the studio has released in recent years, having released as many as 16 movies in 2016 and as few as 12 in 2018.
For the remainder of the year Fox will debut The Art of Racing in the Rain this Friday (8/9), plus The Woman in the Window in October, Ford v Ferrari in November (a likely awards contender) and the animated Spies in Disguise on Christmas. Next year the studio has some high profile releases like The King’s Man, The Call of the Wild reboot, the action-comedy Free Guy, the Bob’s Burgers movie, Death on the Nile, and West Side Story from Steven Spielberg.
