Fox Walden Absorbed by Fox
Walden Media and Fox Filmed Entertainment today announced the restructuring and streamlining of the companies’ Fox Walden joint venture in order to create greater efficiency by utilizing more of the existing Fox film marketing resources. The two companies reaffirmed their continuing relationship by partnering on the upcoming films “Tooth Fairy” and “Ramona.”
Both Walden and Fox will continue to separately develop family films and will be able to offer one another the opportunity to co-finance and co-produce such films. All such films will still be overseen by Fox Walden and distributed domestically by Fox, but the reconfigured joint venture will be housed within Fox rather than operating as a standalone entity.
David Weil, CEO of Anschutz Film Group (parent of Walden Media), said: “Fox Walden has been a tremendous asset for our company and Fox has been an outstanding partner. Moving marketing functions to inside the main Fox marketing machine – the best in the business – makes both creative and financial sense. We’re very happy that it will continue to exist within Fox under Jeffrey’s leadership and we intend to continue to provide 3-5 films a year.”
The aim of Fox Walden is to bring movie audiences quality family-friendly pictures at a variety of budget levels. Movies marketed by the joint venture will encompass all genres and will generally be MPAA-rated “G” and “PG”. Walden Media will continue to provide to the entity its grassroots outreach services which focus on education, youth groups, faith groups and families. It also creates educational curriculum for most Fox Walden films.
You can read the entire press release on Comingsoon.net’s website here.
The LA Times also adds that “Fox Walden, the 2-year-old marketing partnership between 20th Century Fox and billionaire Phil Anschutz’s Walden Media, is downsizing after a string of disappointing releases, including “The Seeker,” “Mr. Magorium’s Emporium” and “Nim’s Island.” As many as 12 people will lose their jobs as a result of the belt-tightening, according to a person close to the company. Fox and Walden decided that it wasn’t cost effective to operate a separate marketing unit for their joint-venture films. About three Fox Walden employees will be absorbed into Walden. Jeffrey Godsick, who is head of the unit, will rejoin Fox as executive vice president of marketing and digital content and continue to oversee Fox Walden, which will now handle fewer releases a year than orginally planned.”
As The Chronicles of Narnia is distributed by Disney, not Fox, it will not be affected.
