No Disney Movie Will Cross $1 Billion At The Box Office This Year – And That's Bad News
2023 has, overall, felt like an up year at the box office. We've had massive hits like "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" that helped deliver a monster summer movie season, we've had original films like Wes Anderson's "Asteroid City" find their audience, and horror has reigned supreme with the likes of "M3GAN" and "Five Nights at Freddy's" putting a lot of butts in seats. Disney, however, has had a down year and, as evidence of that, not a single one of the studio's mega-budget blockbusters released this year will cross the $1 billion mark.
Disney's highest-grossing movie of the year is director James Gunn's "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," which topped out at $845 million worldwide, per Box Office Mojo. That makes it the fourth highest-grossing movie of the year behind "Oppenheimer" ($950 million), "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" ($1.36 billion), and "Barbie" ($1.44 billion). From there, it's a steep drop-off, with Disney's next biggest film being "The Little Mermaid" ($569 million), followed by "Elemental" ($495 million), and "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" ($476 million), which currently rounds out the top ten for the year.
It's a remarkable change for Disney, a studio that had seven movies — "Aladdin" ($1.05 billion), "Toy Story 4") ($1.07 billion), "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" ($1.07 billion), "Captain Marvel" ($1.12 billion), "Frozen II" ($1.45 billion), "The Lion King" ($1.65 billion), and "Avengers: Endgame" ($2.8 billion) — make at least $1 billion in 2019 pre-pandemic. Let's not forget about Sony's "Spider-Man: Far From Home" ($1.13 billion), which Disney had a stake in.
The concerning part is that Disney still spent ridiculous amounts of money on many movies this year. "Elemental" was a $200 million movie that was bailed out by a remarkable, unprecedented run. Other movies such as "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" ($384 million worldwide/$300 million budget), "Haunted Mansion" ($117 million worldwide/$150 million budget), and "The Marvels" ($188 million worldwide to date/$250 million budget) weren't nearly as lucky.
Disney's fall from grace
I'm not saying that a blockbuster has to make $1 billion to be considered a success, but when you spend $200 million or more on one it certainly needs to make more than $476 million like "Quantumania" did. Big budgets require big results. To be fair, that's not exclusively a Disney problem. I'm also not suggesting that anyone should cry tears for Disney — one of the world's biggest corporations. What I am saying is that this is bad for the industry. It's also a sign of just how much has changed in the last four years, largely thanks to the pandemic. But that's not the only reason the Mouse House has fallen from the once mega-high heights they experienced at the box office.
It's perhaps no coincidence that Disney+ launched in late 2019 just before the pandemic shut down Hollywood and movie theaters for months on end. Audiences got used to the idea that Disney's biggest franchises could be viewed from the comfort of home. Not only were movies from Pixar and Marvel Studios going to live there, but shows existing in the "Star Wars" universe and Marvel Cinematic Universe were there as well. It's easy to conclude that the company's major push towards a streaming-focused future has impacted returns at the box office.
In fairness, 2020 and 2021 were brutal to just about everyone in the industry thanks to COVID-19, and it wasn't until the very end of 2021 that we had a movie finally crack the $1 billion mark again in the form of "Spider-Man: No Way Home." But it's not as though movies aren't crossing such milestones anymore — it's just that Disney isn't the studio largely responsible for making them now. Only "Avatar: The Way of Water" ($2.3 billion) has crossed that threshold, and that was a project the studio inherited in its acquisition of Fox in 2019. It wasn't a homegrown title.
Can anyone fill the void?
No matter what the cause it's clear that Disney's recent past as the unquestioned, dominant theatrical force in Hollywood is over. Audiences are showing strong resistance to recent Marvel films and those superhero blockbusters are no longer the surefire bets they once were. Pixar is no longer the guaranteed hit-maker it was pre-pandemic. We haven't had a "Star Wars" movie since 2019 and, at present, we still don't know which of the many projects in development will get made first. It's hard to see Disney getting back on top of the hill any time soon.
For the industry at large, the loss of Disney's dominance is being felt in a major way. Yes, the box office has recovered significantly this year, but we're still trailing well behind pre-pandemic levels of moviegoing. What we're missing are movies like "Ralph Breaks the Internet" ($529 million worldwide) that can deliver blockbuster numbers over Thanksgiving. We're missing the next "Frozen" ($1.28 billion worldwide) or the next "Coco" ($814 million worldwide). As of yet, nobody has managed to fill that void.
The question facing the industry in the immediate future is whether or not another studio will pick up where Disney left off. Can Warner Bros. pick up some of the slack with the DC Universe and other big franchises? Can Universal Pictures and Illumination fill the animated franchise gap? We know that audiences are happy to return to theaters when they are given a good enough reason to leave the house. Disney used to be the best bet to get the masses to collectively leave the house. That's no longer a guarantee.
Sadly, the first chunk of 2024 looks bare thanks to the long-lasting strikes. Disney doesn't have a single movie hitting theaters until "The First Omen" in April next year, and things don't truly get cooking until "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" arrives in May. Who knows? Maybe 2025 can provide greener pastures.