Talking About the Disney/21st Century Fox Deal: Does Disney Own the Movie 'Titanic' Now?


Does Disney own the movie Titanic now?
James Cameron’s 1997 film was the most expensive motion picture of its day; its unprecedented $200 million budget was so large that Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment had to team up with two major studios to get his film made and distributed.
The two studios that stepped up to the plate were Paramount Pictures (a subsidiary of Viacom) and 20th Century Fox Film Corporation (a division of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation).
Though it might seem strange that two rival studios would join forces to produce and release a major motion picture, it has happened several times, most notably when Universal Pictures and Columbia Pictures bankrolled Steven Spielberg’s 1941 back in the late 1970s.
What usually happens in these deals is that one studio gets the rights for domestic distribution, while the other gets the foreign distribution rights. In the case of Titanic, Paramount Pictures got dibs on the lucrative North American market, while 20th Century Fox distributed the film overseas.
The same deal applies for the home media release; when I bought my VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray releases of Titanic, I noticed that the packaging emphasized its status as a Paramount Home Entertainment release. 20th Century Fox and Lightstorm Entertainment get mentioned in the copyright fine print, but it’s the Paramount logo that appears on the spine of the packaging.
Before March 20, 2019, 20th Century Fox (at the time, part of Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, the company purchased by Disney) still owned the foreign rights to Titanic. After that date, Fox’s ownership of those rights was inherited by its 21st Century Fox’s parent, The Walt Disney Company.
As far as I know, though, the domestic rights are still owned by Paramount Pictures and Viacom.

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