20th Century Fox

The Walt Disney Company, which is celebrating its centennial in 2023, threw a bit of a low-key commemorative revelry during its CinemaCon presentation at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Instead of cake and champagne, the Burbank-based Mouse House instead chose to let their upcoming slate of films, which for the first time presented product from all seven of their main studios, do the toasting.

There are still many unknowns about the Disney-Fox deal, but the acquisition of Fox by the Burbank Behemoth, which diminishes the historic major studios from six to five, promises to be epochal in many ways for the movie industry and the City of Angels. While we wait to learn its practical effects on everything from the feature production slate to city traffic, HFPA member and ex-president Phil Berk has this remembrance of a studio which will forever be part of filmdom history.

CinemaCon’s last day and the delegates were woken right up at the start of the Fox presentation by iLuminate dancers dressed in black and white top hat and tails. Their costumes were covered with LED and electroluminescent wires that lit up in synchrony as they danced in the dark to the tune of ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business.