Finding Dory Suicide Squad Captain America,

Captain America: Civil War; The Jungle Book; Rogue One: A Star Wars Story; and Finding Dory, a sequel to Finding Nemo.

“The Pixar acquisition saved Disney Animation,” says Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst Jessica Reif Cohen. “That was the beginning.” Disney is “the only company right now that has a branded film strategy,” she says, with each of its sub-brands churning out its own string of reliable, predictable fare. “Consumers know what they are going to get, which makes marketing easy and efficient.”

John Lasseter, one of the original Pixar animators and director of the megahit Toy Story, is the creative leader of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation. That’s allowed him to help reinvigorate the animation unit and produce more modern hits, such as Frozen and this year’s Zootopia.

Universal is aping that approach with Chris Meledandri, creator of the hugely successful Despicable Me films, who will oversee his Illumination Entertainment, Universal’s animation partner, and the Dreamworks Animation studio Comcast agreed to acquire in April. The buyout is seen as Comcast’s attempt to lock in intellectual property—including the characters from Dreamworks’ Shrek and Kung Fu Panda— that Universal can exploit in its theme parks, the way Disney does. “The industry looks at Disney with envy,” Reif Cohen says. “It is a highly successful and unique strategy, wellexecuted and hard to duplicate.”

Summer is the most lucrative time of year for studios, and analysts predict this season could beat 2013’s record. A slew of highly anticipated releases including and Warner Bros.’ could, along with

push the summer season to about $5 billion in ticket sales in North America, estimates Geetha Ranganathan, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. With breakout hits such as Fox’s offbeat antihero Deadpool and the unexpectedly strong turnout for Disney’s The Jungle Book, 2016 could see recently set annual boxoffice records broken again—especially because Disney’s second Star Wars- related release will hit theaters in December. Crockett estimates 2016 will outstrip the