20th Century Studios is a major American motion-picture studio. It was formed in 1935 by the merger of Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures. Fox Film Corporation was founded in 1915 by the movie theater entrepreneur William Fox. Twentieth Century Pictures was cofounded in 1933 by Darryl F. Zanuck, the former head of production at Warner Bros., and Joseph Schenck, the former president of United Artists. Until 2020, 20th Century Studios was named Twentieth Century Fox.
Shortly after the merger in 1935, Twentieth Century Fox released several popular films featuring the child star Shirley Temple. The studio’s adult stars Betty Grable, Henry Fonda, and Tyrone Power were also popular at the time. Twentieth Century Fox later produced the Academy Award-winning melodrama Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), the musical comedy Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and the action picture Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). In the 1950’s, the studio experimented with 3-D and introduced the widescreen format CinemaScope, which quickly became the industry standard.
In 1965, Twentieth Century Fox released the popular, Academy Award-winning musical The Sound of Music. In 1977, the studio produced the science-fiction fantasy Star Wars, one of the most popular and profitable films in motion-picture history. It was followed by several successful sequels. In 1997, Twentieth Century Fox co-distributed (with Paramount Pictures) Titanic. Titanic was the top-grossing film of all time until 2010, when it was surpassed at the box office by Twentieth Century Fox’s science-fiction film Avatar (2009). Other popular films produced by Twentieth Century Fox include the Alien series of films, begun in 1979, and the X-Men series of films, begun in 2000. 
News Corporation , also called News Corp, purchased Twentieth Century Fox in 1985. In 2013, News Corp was separated into two companies—News Corp and 21st Century Fox . Twentieth Century Fox then became part of 21st Century Fox. In 2019, the Walt Disney Company acquired Twentieth Century Fox. The studio was renamed 20th Century Studios in 2020.
