The decision to shut down the Indian office of the Rupert Murdoch controlled 20th Century Fox has created a flutter in the trade. According to reports, the head of the Asia Pacific region of the Hollywood studio issued a notice to all the employees that they were closing down the Indian operations of the company, A month ago, the dynamic CEO of Fox' Indian office, Aditya Shastri, quit the company and joined UTV as the CEO of their motion pictures business.

The Marketing Manager of 20th Century Fox, Paresh Manjrekar, refused to comment on the reasons that led to the abrupt decision but trade analysts attribute it to the collective losses on several films accrued in the recent past, though Fox' last release, GARFIELD, is said to have got a net profit of Rs 25 lakhs, hardly a losing proposition. "It is a fact that the m

arket for dubbed English films is not the same as it used to be once upon a time. Also a majority of English films, apart from a handful few, have got a poor response at the box-office in recent times. Considering the publicity costs and the efforts involved in releasing a film year, it may not be a profitable proposition. But I would not like to make any comment yet on the exact reasons that prompted the development," Manjrekar revealed.

Meanwhile, Fox has instructed that its logo be withdrawn from the publicity and posters of a forthcoming film, BULLET, for which it had acquired the distribution rights. The film shot entirely in Bulgaria was the last among the many films that it had acquired for distribution, besides PINJAR, TEHZEEB, BOLLYWOOD CALLING and EK HASEENA THI, for which it had tied up with Ram Gopal Varma Productions.

It may be recalled that 20th Century Fox had first open its office in 1932. More recently in the past few years, it was looking at further diversifying its operations in India in the dubbed film market and the Hindi film distribution market.