In May, Taika Waititi, the director of Disney’s four-quadrant comic-book movie hit Thor: Ragnarok, will begin production on a much tinier film, a World War II satire about a 10-year-old boy trying to fit in in fascist Germany with the help of an imaginary friend. Executives at Fox Searchlight, the specialty division of 21st Century Fox, green-lit Waititi’s subversive script, Jojo Rabbit, months ago. In the wake of Disney’s blockbuster new deal for Fox announced on Thursday, Jojo Rabbit becomes an unintended example of what a Disney-owned arthouse division might do.

“We believe in Taika as a filmmaker, and we felt like this was a movie where we can make it on our scale and the right way . . . He doesn’t have to sand off the edges, doesn’t have to change the humor,” said Matthew Greenfield, who heads up production for Fox Searchlight with David Greenbaum. The two executives spoke with Vanity Fair at their offices in early December, at a time when the Disney-Fox deal was just a rumor—but one propelling nervous conversations around their Century City lot. “We hope that any company will value what we do,” Greenfield said of the potential deal. “We feel like the filmmakers we work with . . . [could] then go on to make big movies for the main division.”

Much of the discussion over the juggernaut media merger has centered on what it will mean for the tentpole movie business. Searchlight represents just a sliver of the theatrical marketplace—usually around 1 percent of any given year’s box-office receipts. Still, the company could fill a gap in Disney’s slate creatively. The Burbank media giant dominates the box office with its Lucasfilm, Marvel, and animated properties—but Disney hasn’t had a specialty division since it sold Miramax in 2010, and the Disney brand is largely absent from arthouses and from the Oscars, outside of animated categories. Speaking on a conference call with analysts in the hours after the deal was announced, Disney chief Bob Iger said he is “very interested in what Searchlight accomplished and . . . we fully intend to stay in those businesses.”

In a world where studios collect recognizable brands like they used to collect movie stars, Fox Searchlight has chosen instead to seek novelty, a strategy that sees it heading into another awards season with strong contenders—this year The Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and Battle of the Sexes. “Familiarity is the enemy,” Greenfield said. “Why would you bother? You have access to 10,000 familiar things from your home right now. . . . What excites the audience is things that feel new, not things that feel familiar.”

Murdoch on the future of Fox.

Much of Searchlight’s success has come from the 23-year-old company’s relative stability in the rocky world of independent film, guided by its long-serving co-presidents, Stephen Gilula and Nancy Utley. As the independent-film acquisition market has gotten crowded with new players like Netflix, Amazon, and A24, Gilula and Utley have shifted Searchlight’s model. They rely increasingly on films that the company finances and produces itself, at a wider range of budgets, charging Greenbaum and Greenfield with developing, budgeting, casting, and producing them. “We just decided, look, we’re in better control of our destiny if we get involved earlier,” Gilula said. Utley continued: “If we own our own I.P. [intellectual property], we can’t be made to overpay.”