Searchlight Pictures, Inc. is an American
film production company and a subsidiary of
Walt Disney Studios, which is part of
the Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Disney Stud ...
. Founded in 1994 as Fox Searchlight Pictures, Inc. for 20th Century Fox (later
20th Century Studios), the studio focuses primarily on producing, distributing, and acquiring
specialty films.
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment
Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Inc., doing business as Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, is the home entertainment distribution arm of The Walt Disney Company. The division handles the distribution of Disney's films, television series, an ...
distributes the films produced by Searchlight in home media under the
20th Century Studios Home Entertainment
20th Century Studios Home Entertainment (commonly referred to as 20th Home Video, or 20th Home Entertainment, formerly known as 20th Century-Fox Video, CBS/Fox Video, Fox Video, and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment) is a home video label of Wa ...
banner.
Searchlight films include ''
Slumdog Millionaire
''Slumdog Millionaire'' is a 2008 British drama film that is a loose adaptation of the novel '' Q & A'' (2005) by Indian author Vikas Swarup. It narrates the story of 18-year-old Jamal Malik from the Juhu slums of Mumbai. Starring Dev Pa ...
'', ''
12 Years a Slave
''Twelve Years a Slave'' is an 1853 memoir and slave narrative by American Solomon Northup as told to and written by David Wilson. Northup, a black man who was born free in New York state, details himself being tricked to go to Washington, D.C. ...
'', ''
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
''Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)'', or simply ''Birdman'', is a 2014 American black comedyDrama (film and television), -drama film directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. It was written by Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Ale ...
'', ''
The Shape of Water
''The Shape of Water'' is a 2017 romantic fantasy film directed by Guillermo del Toro and written by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor. It stars Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Octavia Spencer ...
'' and ''
Nomadland'', all of which won an
Academy Award for Best Picture. Other Best Picture nominations include ''
The Full Monty
''The Full Monty'' is a 1997 British comedy film directed by Peter Cattaneo, starring Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy, William Snape, Steve Huison, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Barber and Hugo Speer. The screenplay was written by Simon Beaufoy. The film ...
'', ''
Sideways
''Sideways'' is a 2004 American comedy-drama road film directed by Alexander Payne and written by Jim Taylor and Payne. A film adaptation of Rex Pickett's 2004 novel of the same name, ''Sideways'' follows two men in their forties, Miles Raymo ...
'', ''
Little Miss Sunshine'', ''
Juno'', ''
Black Swan'', ''
127 Hours
''127 Hours'' is a 2010 biographical psychological survival drama film co-written, produced and directed by Danny Boyle. The film stars James Franco, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn and Clémence Poésy. In the film, canyoneer Aron Ralston mus ...
'', ''
The Tree of Life
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
'', ''
The Descendants
''The Descendants'' is a 2011 American comedy-drama film directed by Alexander Payne. The screenplay by Payne, Nat Faxon, and Jim Rash is based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Kaui Hart Hemmings. The film stars George Clooney in the mai ...
'', ''
Beasts of the Southern Wild
''Beasts of the Southern Wild'' is a 2012 American fantasy-drama film directed, co-written, and co-scored by Benh Zeitlin. It was adapted by Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar from Alibar's one-act play ''Juicy and Delicious''. The film stars Quvenzhané ...
'', ''
The Grand Budapest Hotel
''The Grand Budapest Hotel'' is a 2014 comedy-drama film written and directed by Wes Anderson. Ralph Fiennes leads a seventeen-actor ensemble cast as Monsieur Gustave H., famed concierge of a twentieth-century mountainside resort in the fiction ...
'', ''
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
'', ''
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri'', ''
The Favourite
''The Favourite'' is a 2018 Historical drama, period black comedy film co-produced and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, from a screenplay by Deborah Davis (screenwriter), Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara (writer), Tony McNamara. Set in early 18th ...
'', ''
Jojo Rabbit
''Jojo Rabbit'' is a 2019 comedy-drama film written and directed by Taika Waititi, adapted from Christine Leunens's 2008 book ''Caging Skies''. Roman Griffin Davis portrays the title character, Johannes "Jojo" Betzler, a ten-year-old Hitler ...
'', and ''
Nightmare Alley''. The studio has grossed over $5.3 billion worldwide and amassed 28
Golden Globe Awards, 51
BAFTA awards, and 46
Academy Awards
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
. ''Slumdog Millionaire'' is the studio's largest commercial success, with over $377 million (US) of box office receipts, against a production budget of only $15 million.
Searchlight Pictures was one of the
21st Century Fox film production companies that was
acquired by Disney on March 20, 2019. The studio's current name was adopted on January 17, 2020 in order to avoid confusion with
Fox Corporation
Fox Corporation (stylized in all-caps as FOX Corporation) is a publicly traded American mass media company operated and controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New York City. Incorporated ...
.
History
Before creation of Searchlight
Prior to the creation of Searchlight, 20th Century Fox was active in the
specialty film market, releasing independent and specialty films under the banner of 20th Century-Fox International Classics, later renamed 20th Century-Fox Specialized Film Division, then TLC Films. The most notable of the releases under these banners include ''
Suspiria'', ''
Bill Cosby: Himself'', ''
Eating Raoul
''Eating Raoul'' is a 1982 American black comedy film written, directed by and starring Paul Bartel with Mary Woronov, Robert Beltran, Ed Begley Jr., Buck Henry, and Susan Saiger. It is about a prudish married couple (Bartel and Woronov) who r ...
'', ''
The Gods Must Be Crazy
''The Gods Must Be Crazy'' is a 1980 comedy film written, produced, edited and directed by Jamie Uys. An international co-production of South Africa and Botswana, it is the first film in ''The Gods Must Be Crazy'' series. Set in Southern Africa ...
'', ''
Reuben, Reuben
''Reuben, Reuben'' is a 1983 comedy-drama film directed by Robert Ellis Miller and starring Tom Conti, Kelly McGillis (in her film debut), Roberts Blossom, Cynthia Harris, and Joel Fabiani.
The film was adapted by Julius J. Epstein from the 19 ...
'', and ''
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
''The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars'' (often shortened to ''Ziggy Stardust'') is the fifth studio album by English musician David Bowie, released on 16June 1972 in the United Kingdom through RCA Records. It was co-pr ...
''.
In the early 1990s, 20th Century Fox executives decided to emulate the commercial success of Disney's newly acquired
Miramax studio. In 1994, 20th announced the formation of a subsidiary that would drive their entry into the
specialty film market, and in July that year, they brought in
Thomas Rothman, then president of production at
The Samuel Goldwyn Company
The Samuel Goldwyn Company was an American independent film company founded by Samuel Goldwyn Jr., the son of the famous Hollywood mogul, Samuel Goldwyn, in 1978.
Background
The company originally distributed and acquired art-house films fro ...
, to head up the new subsidiary. It was soon given the name Fox Searchlight Pictures, with Rothman as its founding president.
The new company inherited the familiar
branding elements associated with 20th Century Fox; Fox Searchlight films opened with a
production logo
A production logo, vanity card, vanity plate, or vanity logo is a logo used by movie studios and television production companies to brand what they produce and to determine the production company and the distributor of a television show or film ...
consisting of the ''Fox Searchlight'' name presented as a large monolith, illuminated by the eponymous
searchlight
A searchlight (or spotlight) is an apparatus that combines an extremely bright source (traditionally a carbon arc lamp) with a mirrored parabolic reflector to project a powerful beam of light of approximately parallel rays in a particular direc ...
s and accompanied by the 20th Century Fox fanfare composed by
Alfred Newman.
First years and 21st Century Fox era
From its first release, ''
The Brothers McMullen
''The Brothers McMullen'' is a 1995 American comedy-drama film written, directed, produced by, and starring Edward Burns. It deals with the lives of the three Irish Catholic McMullen brothers from Long Island, New York, over three months, as they ...
'' (1995), Fox Searchlight went to distribute a series of independent films such as ''
Girl 6'', ''
Stealing Beauty
''Stealing Beauty'' (french: Beauté volée; it, Io ballo da sola) is a 1996 drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and starring Liv Tyler, Joseph Fiennes, Jeremy Irons, Sinéad Cusack, and Rachel Weisz. Written by Bertolucci and Susan Mi ...
'', and ''
She's the One'' (all 1996). While critically well received, these early releases were not commercially very successful; Fox Searchlight's first real commercial breakthrough came with ''
The Full Monty
''The Full Monty'' is a 1997 British comedy film directed by Peter Cattaneo, starring Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy, William Snape, Steve Huison, Tom Wilkinson, Paul Barber and Hugo Speer. The screenplay was written by Simon Beaufoy. The film ...
'' (1997), garnering the studio's first awards.
In 2006, a companion label,
Fox Atomic, was created to produce and/or distribute genre films. Fox Atomic closed down in 2009.
On June 28, 2012,
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...
announced that Searchlight's parent company
News Corporation
News Corporation (abbreviated News Corp.), also variously known as News Corporation Limited, was an American multinational mass media corporation controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New ...
would be split into two publishing and media oriented companies: a
new News Corporation, which takes on the publishing and Australian broadcasting assets, and
21st Century Fox, which operated the
Fox Entertainment Group
Fox Entertainment Group was an American entertainment company specialised in filmed entertainment owned by 21st Century Fox. Following the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney, the group's assets were folded into various Disney units. The ...
and
20th Century Fox
20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Dis ...
until its acquisition by
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Disney Stud ...
. Murdoch considered the name of the new company a way to maintain the 20th Century Fox's heritage.
Fox Stage Productions was formed in June 2013.
The creation of
21st Century Fox was completed on June 28, 2013. In August 2013, 20CF started a theatrical joint venture with a trio of producers, both film and theater,
Kevin McCollum
Kevin McCollum (born March 1, 1962) is an American theatrical booking executive and producer of musical theater and plays, many on Broadway. During a producing career spanning over twenty-five years, McCollum has received three Tony Awards for ...
,
John Davis and Tom McGrath.
Disney era
On December 14, 2017,
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Disney Stud ...
agreed to
acquire
''Acquire'' is a multi-player mergers and acquisitions themed board game. It is played with tiles representing hotels that are arranged on the board, play money and stock certificates. The object of the game is to earn the most money by developi ...
most assets from 21st Century Fox, including Fox Searchlight, for $52.4 billion. After a bid from
Comcast (parent company of
NBCUniversal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States.
NBCUniversal is primaril ...
) for $65 billion, Disney counterbid with $71.3 billion.
On July 19, 2018, Comcast dropped out of the bid for 21st Century Fox in favor of
Sky plc and
Sky UK. Eight days later, Disney and 21st Century Fox shareholders approved the merger between the two companies. On March 12, 2019, Disney announced it has set to close the Fox deal on March 20. On March 19, 2019, 21st Century Fox
spun off the remaining assets, including the
Fox Broadcasting Company
The Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly known simply as Fox and stylized in all caps as FOX, is an Television in the United States, American Commercial broadcasting, commercial terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by Fox C ...
,
Fox Television Stations
Fox Television Stations, LLC (FTS; alternately Fox Television Stations Group, LLC), is a group of television stations located within the United States, which are owned-and-operated by the Fox Broadcasting Company, a subsidiary of the Fox Co ...
,
Fox News Channel,
Fox Business,
Fox Sports 1
Fox Sports 1 (FS1) is an American pay television channel owned by the Fox Sports Media Group, a unit of Fox Corporation. FS1 replaced the motorsports network Speed on August 17, 2013, at the same time that its companion channel Fox Sports ...
and
2,
Fox Deportes
Fox Deportes (formerly Fox Sports en Español and stylized in all caps as FOX Deportes) is an American pay television network dedicated to broadcasting sports-related programming in Spanish, aimed at the Hispanic population in the United States ...
, and the
Big Ten Network into the newly formed
Fox Corporation
Fox Corporation (stylized in all-caps as FOX Corporation) is a publicly traded American mass media company operated and controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New York City. Incorporated ...
in preparation for final consummation of the sale. On the next day, the sale was completed. After trying a day, Disney set film leadership lineup.
As of November 2019,
FX Networks
FX Networks, LLC, is a company consisting of a network of cable channels plus a production company and a subsidiary of the Disney General Entertainment Content segment of The Walt Disney Company. Originally a part of 21st Century Fox, the compan ...
and Fox Searchlight were assigned to supply
Hulu with content. On January 17, 2020, it was announced that the "Fox" name would be dropped from several of the Fox assets that were acquired by Disney, shortening the company's name to "Searchlight Pictures", in order to avoid brand confusion with the
Fox Corporation
Fox Corporation (stylized in all-caps as FOX Corporation) is a publicly traded American mass media company operated and controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New York City. Incorporated ...
.
More recently, Nancy Utley has officially left Searchlight Pictures after six months, to launch Lake Ellyn Entertainment, and struck a first look deal with
Chernin Entertainment
Chernin Entertainment is an American film and television production company founded and owned by former News Corporation president and chief operating officer Peter Chernin, also CEO and chairman of the company. Jenno Topping is the current Head ...
.
Film library
Accolades
Since 1994, Searchlight Pictures has accumulated 164
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
nominations with 46 wins (including five Best Picture winners since 2009), 117
Golden Globe nominations with 28 wins, 173
BAFTA nominations with 51 wins, 66
Screen Actors Guild Award nominations with 12 wins, 215
Critics Choice Award
The Critics' Choice Movie Awards (formerly known as the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award) is an awards show presented annually by the American-Canadian Critics Choice Association (CCA) to honor the finest in cinematic achievement. Writ ...
nominations with 55 wins, and 137
Independent Spirit Awards nominations with 54 wins.
Related units
Searchlight Television
Searchlight Television is the television production division of Searchlight Pictures. Launched in April 2018, Searchlight Television broadens the variety of projects produced under the Searchlight banner. It is headed by David Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield.
Both original material and adaptations of Searchlight's existing film library will be produced for cable, streaming and broadcast television, in the form of documentaries, scripted series, limited series and more. In April 2019, the
Hulu streaming service ordered ''
The Dropout
''The Dropout'' is an American biographical crime drama miniseries created by Elizabeth Meriwether, based on the podcast of the same name hosted by Rebecca Jarvis and produced by ABC News. The series documents the disgraced biotechnology comp ...
'', starring
Amanda Seyfried
Amanda Michelle Seyfried ( ; born December 3, 1985) is an American actress. Born and raised in Allentown, Pennsylvania, she began modeling at age 11 and ventured into acting at 15, with recurring roles as Lucy Montgomery on the CBS soap opera ...
from Searchlight Television and
20th Television
20th Television (formerly 20th Century Fox Television, 20th Century-Fox Television, and TCF Television Productions, Inc.) is an American television production company that is a division of Disney Television Studios, part of The Walt Disney Comp ...
.
The studio is also developing an adaptation of the ''City of Ghosts'' novel with
ABC Signature
ABC Signature is an American television production studio that is a subsidiary of Disney Television Studios, a division of Walt Disney Television, which is part of the Disney General Entertainment Content division of The Walt Disney Compan ...
and an adaptation of
N. K. Jemisin's ''
Inheritance Trilogy'' with
Westbrook Studios
Westbrook Inc. is an American multimedia and entertainment venture company founded by actor Will Smith and his wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith. The company was founded in 2019, in order to execute the Smith Family's global content. It is headqu ...
.
In October 2021, Hulu ordered a sequel series to the Mel Brooks film ''
History of the World, Part I
''History of the World, Part I'' is a 1981 American comedy film written, produced, and directed by Mel Brooks. Brooks also stars in the film, playing five roles: Moses, Comicus the stand-up philosopher, Tomás de Torquemada, King Louis XVI, an ...
'' from Searchlight Television and 20th Television.
Searchlight Shorts
In March 2019, the studio launched Searchlight Shorts, a collection of short films that the studio would acquire from upper-tier festivals and release on their YouTube channel. The first two films to be acquired by the studio for this collection were Shelly Lauman's ''
Birdie
Birdy or Birdie may refer to:
Places in the United States
* Birdie, Georgia, an unincorporated community
* Birdie, Mississippi, an unincorporated community
People with the name
* Birdie Blye (1871–1935), American pianist
* Birdy (singe ...
'' and
Guy Nattiv's ''
Skin
Skin is the layer of usually soft, flexible outer tissue covering the body of a vertebrate animal, with three main functions: protection, regulation, and sensation.
Other animal coverings, such as the arthropod exoskeleton, have different de ...
'', the latter of which won the 2018
Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film
The Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film is an award presented at the annual Academy Awards ceremony. The award has existed, under various names, since 1957.
From 1936 until 1956 there were two separate awards, "Best Short Subject, One- ...
. Other acquisitions for the collection included A.V. Rockwell's ''Feathers'',
Matthew Puccini's ''
Lavender
''Lavandula'' (common name lavender) is a genus of 47 known species of flowering plants in the mint family, Lamiaceae. It is native to the Old World and is found in Cape Verde and the Canary Islands, and from Europe across to northern and easte ...
'', Freddy Macdonald's ''Sew Torn'',
Savanah Leaf and
Taylor Russell
Taylor Russell McKenzie (born July 18, 1994) is a Canadian actress. She has starred in the Netflix science fiction series ''Lost in Space'' (2018–2021). In film, she has starred in the critically acclaimed drama ''Waves'' (2019), for which she ...
's ''The Heart Still Hums'' and Julia Baylis and Sam Guest's ''Wiggle Room''.
See also
*
20th Century Studios
*
Touchstone Television
The second incarnation of Touchstone Television (formerly known as Fox 21 Television Studios) was an American television production company that is a subsidiary of Disney Media Networks' Walt Disney Television owned by The Walt Disney Company. It ...
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
*
External links
*
{{Authority control
American companies established in 1994
Film distributors of the United States
Film production companies of the United States
Entertainment companies based in California
Companies based in Los Angeles
Mass media companies established in 1994
Entertainment companies established in 1994
1994 establishments in California
American independent film studios
20th Century Studios
Walt Disney Studios (division)
Disney acquisitions
Disney production studios
Former News Corporation subsidiaries