Fox Animation Studios

Fox Animation Studios was a short-lived traditional animation studio, a division of 20th Century Fox, headed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. The department was designed to compete with Walt Disney Feature Animation, which had phenomenal success in the early-1990s with the releases of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King.

The studio's output was not as successful as the Disney films were. Only one of its two theatrical releases, Anastasia, turned a profit. The other theatrical Fox Animation Studios production, Titan A.E., made only USD$9,376,845 in its opening weekend&mdash;on an estimated budget of $75,000,000&mdash;and the studio was shut down as a result.

The only other Fox Animation Studios productions were Adventures from the Book of Virtues, a PBS television series, and Bartok the Magnificent, a direct-to-video sequel to Anastasia. The studio also did credited clean-up animation on DreamWorks' The Prince of Egypt. Bluth and Goldman were considered to produce Ice Age as a traditionally animated feature, but passed on the script. Another direct-to-video movie, one of the company's more successful ventures, was the film Thumbelina (based on the Hans Christian Anderson tale), an animated musical starring the well-known voice actor Jodi Benson.