Prior to the creation of Searchlight, Twentieth Century Fox was active in the specialty film market, releasing independent and specialty films under the banner of 20th Century-Fox International Classics, later renamed 20th Century-Fox Specialized Film Division, then TLC Films. The most notable of the releases under these banners include Suspiria, , Eating Raoul, The Gods Must Be Crazy, Reuben, Reuben, and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. In the early 1990s, Twentieth Century Fox executives decided to emulate the commercial success of Disney's newly acquired Miramax studio. In 1994 Twentieth announced the formation of a subsidiary that would drive their entry into the specialty film market, and in July that year, they brought in Thomas Rothman, then president of production at The Samuel Goldwyn Company, to head up the new subsidiary. It was soon given the name Fox Searchlight Pictures, with Rothman as its founding president. The new company inherited the familiar branding elements associated with Twentieth Century Fox; Fox Searchlight films opened with a production logo consisting of the Fox Searchlight name presented as a large monolith, illuminated by the eponymous searchlights and accompanied by the Twentieth Century fanfare composed by Alfred Newman. From its first release, The Brothers McMullen, Fox Searchlight went to distribute a series of independent films such as Girl 6, Stealing Beauty and She's the One. While critically well received, these early releases were not commercially very successful; Fox Searchlight's first real commercial breakthrough came with The Full Monty, garnering the studio's first awards. In 2006, a companion label, Fox Atomic, was created to produce and/or distribute genre films. Fox Atomic closed down in 2009. The acquisition of 21st Century Fox by Disney took place on March 20, 2019, including Fox Searchlight. As of November 2019, FX and Fox Searchlight were assigned to supply Hulu with content. On January 17, 2020, it was announced that the "Fox" name would be dropped from several of the Fox assets that were acquired by Disney, shortening the company's name to "Searchlight Pictures", in favor to distance it from Fox Corporation.
In April 2018, the studio launched Searchlight Television, broadening the variety of projects produced under the Searchlight banner. It is headed by David Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield. Both original material and adaptations of Searchlight's existing film library will be produced for cable, streaming and broadcast television, in the form of documentaries, scripted series, limited series and more. In April 2019, the Hulu streaming service ordered The Dropout, starring Kate McKinnon from Searchlight Television.
