20th Century Fox has inked a deal to partner up with Chronicles of Narnia producers Walden Media. Their goal? To get more money out of mommies and daddies.
The Associated Press reports that the two companies have formed a joint venture to produce and market family films. For Fox, the benefit here is that they get an already successful, family friendly production house on their team cranking out cash cow pictures. For Walden, the benefit is that they now have a permanent home. Until now they’ve been drifting around working for whoever will hire them. For instance, the Narnia movies got made with the blessing of Disney. Don’t worry though, this won’t affect Aslan’s future movies. Projects in play between Walden and companies like Disney, Paramount, and New Line will continue on as planned.
Like most of Hollywood’s major studios, Fox has been angling to take a piece of Disney’s family market for several years now. They’ve had some success with movies like the Ice Age films, but bringing in Walden makes them a more viable competitor in the G and PG market. Now that Disney has merged with Pixar the window for nipping away at their family friendly stranglehold may have closed, but there’s so much money to be made in the kid entertainment market in movies and bad straight to video DVD that Fox is going to try and grab a bigger slice of the pie anyway.
