Say whatever you like about all of the live action remakes of classic Disney movies. You can even complain about the deluge of movies from Marvel Comics characters and the quality of the recent Star Wars flicks. What you cannot deny, however, is that Disney is making some serious bank from these movie releases. The House of Mouse has brought in nearly $8 billion at the box office in 2019 alone – and there are still five months and about nine more Disney films to go this year. To be fair, that would include movies like Stuber and Ford v. Ferrari which will be released by the recently acquired 20th Century Fox.
The Lion King is about to finish its second week in theaters and has already amassed worldwide ticket sales of over $962 million. Aladdin cleared that billion dollar hurdle last week and odds are that Toy Story 4 will join them sometime in August. When you add up box office totals for all of the disney movies released in theaters this year the total is $.7.67. This amount blows past the studio’s previous record of $7.61 billion in 2016 – and we are still in the month of July. Over $5 billion of this total comes from overseas ticket sales. No other film studio based in Hollywood has earned so much revenue internationally.
Over $3 billion of this revenue comes from Avengers: Endgame but this is still an insane amount of money to bring in over a five month period.
There are still a couple of Aces in Disney’s sleeve to be played later this year. Frozen 2 will be released in November. Even if we take into account that 2019 has been a brutal year for sequels, Frozen has a rabid fanbase and there is no doubt that this movie will do well at the box office. We also have Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker on December 20th. The Force Awakens brought in over $2 billion in 2015 while The Last Jedi saw ticket sales of $1.3 billion. Whatever your opinion of modern Star Wars may be, it is safe to say that the newest film in the franchise will bring in over one billion during its theatrical run.
2019 will also bring us Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Spies in Disguise along with a plethora of smaller films. Odds are good that Disney movies will bring in over $10 billion in ticket sales by the end of this year.
