Anna in “Frozen II.”
Disney
With Sunday’s estimates, Disney is now a breath away from hauling in $10 billion globally from its 2019 box office titles.
As “Frozen II” continues to dominate the box office, both domestically and internationally, Disney’s tally for the year hovers around $9.9 billion, according to data from Comscore.
This record smashes the $7.6 billion Disney posted in 2016, which had remained the highest a studio had ever earned in a year until 2019. Of course, Disney’s massive haul does not include the Fox titles it acquired during its acquisition of 20th Century Fox earlier this year.
Including Fox titles such as “X-Men: Dark Phoenix,” “Ad Astra” and “Ford v. Ferrari” would put Disney’s at nearly $12 billion.
And all this is before the release of “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.”
John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Oscar Isaac in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” coming to theaters Dec. 20th, 2019.
“Disney has had an unbelievable year at the box office in 2019 and the international component of that success clearly demonstrates the power of the brand not just in the U.S. market, but with fans the world over,” Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, said.
Already, Disney has five feature films that have surpassed $1 billion at the global box office. Within the week “Frozen II” is expected to join that club as the sixth alongside “Avengers: Endgame,” “The Lion King,” “Aladdin,” “Captain Marvel,” and “Toy Story 4.”
This is the most $1 billion films any studio has ever had in a single year and “Rise of Skywalker” could be the seventh.
Avengers Endgame
Source: Marvel Studios.
However, Disney will be hard pressed to repeat this year’s success in 2020. Many of the company’s titles this year were hotly anticipated origin stories, sequels and finales. Next year, the slate is not quite as strong.
Still, films like “Jungle Cruise,” “Mulan,” “Black Widow,” “The Eternals,” “Onward,” “Soul” and “Raya and the Last Dragon,” will draw crowds to theaters. Not to mention, it has a collection of Fox titles coming out next year, too, like “Free Guy,” “West Side Story” and “The King’s Man.”
Disney packed 2019 with major releases as it prepared the launch of its streaming service Disney+. Starting with “Captain Marvel,” all future box office titles will only ever be available to stream through Disney’s platform. Digital copies are still available to be purchased through third-party vendors.
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” arrives in theaters Dec. 20.