Disney lost global box office leadership to Universal Pictures on its 100th anniversary.
In 2023, Universal Pictures became the year’s highest-earning studio, ending Disney’s seven-year victory. Universal, which has two films in the top three of the year’s highest earners, such as “Super Mario Brothers Movie” and “Oppenheimer”, grossed $4.91 billion worldwide, while Disney films remained at $4.83 billion.
Although Disney, which has released fewer films than Universal, has generally been on the agenda with its failures this year, it still managed to achieve a certain profit with films such as “Guardians of the Galaxy 3” and “The Little Mermaid”. But it didn’t have a film on par with “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which earned $1.36 million at the global box office, and “Oppenheimer,” which earned $952 million.
Although these two films alone accounted for nearly half of Universal’s earnings, the studio, like every major studio, had disappointing performances, with “Renfield” being the prime example. But they also had a number of smaller successes throughout the year, especially in the horror genre. Given its family-friendly identity, horror isn’t an area where Disney expects much profit.
Blumhouse led the way with “M3GAN” and “Five Nights at Freddy’s” earning $181 million and $291 million worldwide, respectively. Both films had small budgets, and the latter became Blumhouse’s highest-grossing film in its history.
Disney, meanwhile, has produced a string of costly box office disasters in 2023. These include “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” ($384 million), “The Marvels” ($206 million) and “Wish” ($177 million). Although these figures are nothing to laugh at, all of the films had relatively high budgets and were not profitable at the box office.
Disney also had some disappointing performances, like “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” ($477 million) despite a great opening weekend of over $100 million. In this context, “Guardians of the Galaxy 3”, which earned $864 million globally, the live-action adaptation of “The Little Mermaid”, which earned $570 million, and Pixar’s subsequent animation, “Elemental”, which earned $496 million, were among the studio’s successful productions.
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