“Now, it’s more difficult than ever to release a film worldwide. “Anything Disney threw out in 2019 made $1 billion,” says Jeff Bock, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations. To be fair, every studio is grappling with these punishing realities as the box office remains down roughly 20% from pre-pandemic times, but Disney has historically enjoyed such a track record of success and its issues are casting a pall over the movie business. As a result, the international box office has diminished to a shadow of its former self, and that has major consequences for Disney’s profitability. Russia, another major market, is entirely cut off from Hollywood movies after its invasion of Ukraine. Those price tags are riskier in today’s box office landscape, with China’s dollars no longer a guarantee due to tensions with the West and changing tastes. In the past, those budgets were justified with movies that crossed $1 billion worldwide with ease. That means the studio’s films have a higher benchmark than its rivals to break even at the box office. Because of its all-tentpole, all-the-time strategy, Disney’s movies each require production budgets of at least $200 million - plus marketing costs of roughly $100 million. There are other issues bedeviling the Magic Kingdom these days. Audiences have been kinder, giving these movies respectable ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and CinemaScore. In many cases, reviews for recent releases haven’t been standout, with critics being particularly scathing about “Quantumania” and openly questioning the need for a fifth “Indy” adventure. But ticket sales for the films it has produced have been more Earth-bound, especially compared to the last pre-COVID year, when Disney fielded a record seven movies that crossed the billion-dollar mark in 2019. It also marks a shift from 2022, which saw the studio release not only hits like “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” but also “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the third-highest grossing film in history.Įven if that’s the case, Disney still far outranks the competition in terms of market share in 2023, commanding 37% of the industry’s revenues (Universal is close behind at 31%). It’s the first time since 2014 (except for the pandemic-stricken years of 20) that Disney won’t have a movie that reaches $1 billion. 3” looks like it’ll be the studio’s biggest earner of the year with $835 million. On paper, these films seemed like they had all of the makings of huge hits, but somehow the Disney sparkle was lacking this time, in terms of filling movie theater seats.īarring a miracle –- or a sudden surge of interest in all things “Haunted Mansion” - “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. There was the dispiriting release of “ Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” a rare Marvel movie to likely lose tens of millions in its theatrical run “The Little Mermaid,” a remake of the 1989 animated classic that fell drastically short of expectations “ Elemental,” an original story that tried and failed to recapture Pixar’s magic and most recently “ Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” a nearly $300 million investment in one of cinemas’ most venerable franchises, which no longer appears to have the same hold on today’s audiences. For the past decade, Disney has been the Teflon movie studio, remarkably adept at withstanding the tectonic changes impacting the film industry, and well fortified by its arsenal of key properties such as Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar.īut this year, the long-reigning titan of the box office has shown cracks as four of its biggest releases from those brands and others have struggled in theaters.
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