In 2019, box office belonged to Disney
NEW YORK — Every movie year offers up a parade of hits and flops. But in 2019, no winner was in the same galaxy as the Walt Disney Co. And the biggest loser might have been anyone less thrilled about the box-office domination of franchise films.
When the year closed Tuesday, the top 10 films in U.S. and Canadian theaters were all intellectual property-backed movies. That, in itself, isn’t new. It’s the third year in a row that the year’s 10 biggest ticket-sellers have been sequels, remakes and superhero films.
But in today’s Ip-driven movie world, one studio is in a league of its own. In 2019, Disney dominated American moviegoing more than any studio ever has before — roughly 38% of all domestic moviegoing.
The year’s top five films were all Disney movies, and it played a hand in the sixth.
Disney’s Marvel Studios produced the Sony Pictures release “Spider-man:
Far From Home.”
Disney banked about $13 billion in worldwide box office in 2019, including a record number of $1 billion releases. Once “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” ($724.8 million through Sunday) inevitably reaches that milestone, it will mark the studio’s seventh such $1 billion movie in 2019. The others were: “Avengers: Endgame” (the highest grossing release ever, not accounting for inflation, with $2.8 billion), “The Lion King,” “Captain Marvel,” “Aladdin,” “Toy Story 4” and “Frozen II.”
Disney’s unprecedented market share includes films from 20th Century Fox, the 84-year-old studio that Disney gobbled up in March in a $71.3 billion acquisition.
Despite Disney’s considerable firepower, overall ticket sales in U.S. and Canadian theaters were down 4.4% from the year before through Sunday, according to data firm Comscore. The upper echelons of the box office may be stratospheric, but the lower realms — where critics' scores are rotten and word of mouth is faster than opening weekend — are dismal. The movies are increasingly a zero-sum game. You’re either “The Lion King” or you’re “Cats.”
“There’s plenty of capacity to bring people to the movie screen,” says Cathleen Taff, distribution chief for Disney. “What I think we’re doing is competing for their time. If it’s not great, they do have other options. But when it is great, people show up. And we’ve seen that this year with seven $1 billion movies.”
Disney's considerable role in today's moviegoing hasn't been without critics. They have lamented its mega-blockbusters as products, not cinema. Before Martin Scorsese's criticisms of Disney's Marvel movies sparked headlines, he lamented the monopolizing of the multiplex, disturbed by the sight of “Avengers: Endgame” playing on 11 of a theater's 12 screens.
If the big-screen experience is narrowing, the small screen is expanding. Streaming services proliferated in 2019 with the launch of Apple TV Plus (although it pushed back its first big movie release ) and Disney Plus. Amazon also reshaped its release strategy, shortening the theatrical window for some of its movies to just two weeks. Netflix rolled out its most ambitious release slate, including a host of awards contenders, led by Scorsese’s “The Irishman” and Noah Baumbach’s
“Marriage Story,” that played in only limited theaters. The so-called streaming wars will only grow in 2020 when Nbcuniversal launches its service, Peacock, and Warnermedia debuts HBO Max.
While some may see a downturn in ticket sales as indicative of streaming’s impact, John Fithian, the president and chief executive of the National Association of Theater Owners, believes streaming is disruptive to broadcast TV, cable and home markets like DVDS, but not to movie theaters.
“This may sound counterintuitive, but with the launch of Disney-plus, HBO Max and Peacock, we’re more confident of the symbiotic relationship of streaming and theatrical than we were before,” says Fithian. “The people who stream also go to the movies a lot.”
Disney, Universal and Warner Bros. also remain devoted to the traditional
theatrical window. Netflix will soon be competing with studios that can offer both a robust theatrical release and a streaming life — albeit not one with the same number of viewers at home that Netflix can promise.
Those services have certainly added pressure to the theatrical release, and quite a few in 2019 weren’t up to the challenge. The year’s most glaring bombs included bold bids at technological innovation ( “Gemini Man” ), mishandled franchise finales (“Dark Phoenix”), remakes that failed to connect (“Charlie’s Angels”), prestige dramas doomed by controversy ( “Richard Jewell” ), toy movies that didn’t click (“Playmobil: The Movie”) and, you know, “Cats.”
But some Hollywood executives point to successes suggesting a vibrant medium. Jordan Peele’s “Us,” for Universal, was the highest grossing original movie. Others like Lionsgate’s “Knives Out,” Fox’s “Ford v Ferrari,” STX’S “Hustlers” and Sony’s “Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood” were also both critical and global hits. Bong Joon Ho's “Parasite” and Lulu Wang's “The Farewell” gave the art house a boost.
“I don’t think that the 4% to 5% drop means the domestic audience wants to stay home on the couch. I think it’s just like everything else in this industry since it began: We have cycles,” says Jim Orr, distribution chief for Universal. “Generally, the box office is still trending up and I think that will continue over time, especially because you can do films like ‘Us’ and films like (the R-rated comedy) ‘Good Boys’ and people will still come out in force.”