Company Town

Multimedia: Twentieth Century Fox, the only major studio that has yet to venture into the trendy and potentially lucrative multimedia business, plans this week to announce the launch of a video game division. Former Fox President Strauss Zelnick laid plans for the interactive unit before he left last year to head a start-up video game company in Silicon Valley. The studio is said to have already committed funding to the development of a video game based on its upcoming Christmas release “Pagemaster,” a mix of live action and animation starring Macaulay Culkin of “Home Alone” fame. Once dismissed as a passing kids’ fad, the video game business--whose $6 billion in annual revenue exceeds the movie industry’s domestic box-office take--has come to be viewed by entertainment companies as a way to get more out of their investments in film and television properties. Fox Chairman Peter Chernin, company President Bill Mechanic and Al Ovadia, president of Fox’s licensing division, are scheduled to discuss the new unit at a Friday press briefing.