Disney produced an unprecedented 80 percent of the top box office hits this year

[sl8]

From https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/23/21034937/disney-star-wars-box-office-2019-marvel-pixar-star-wars-avengers-lion-king-frozen

Disney produced an unprecedented 80 percent of the top box office hits this year
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker pushes House of Mouse over the top

By Julia Alexander Dec 23, 2019, 10:26am EST


Lucasfilm

It’s difficult not to look at Disney’s record-breaking year, securing eight of the top 10 highest-grossing films of 2019 domestically and its impressive entrance into streaming with Disney+, without whispering to yourself “maybe Martin Scorsese had a point.”

Disney’s new record follows the release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The film grossed $175.5 million domestically in its opening weekend, just skirting past Universal Pictures’ critically acclaimed horror film, Us, which grossed $175.05 million total domestically. Although Rise of Skywalker is currently the 10th highest-grossing movie in 2019 in the United States, that’s expected to change as more people go out to watch the film in the coming days.

Glancing at Disney’s releases this year yields an unprecedented collection of guaranteed hits. Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far From Home (Marvel Studios and Disney co-produced the film with Sony, but Marvel Studios had full creative control) brought an end the Infinity Saga. Toy Story 4 and Frozen 2 were highly anticipated next installments in adored franchises. Aladdin and The Lion King were remakes of some of Disney’s most popular ‘90s animated films, and The Rise of Skywalker is a Star Wars movie. It works out to more than $10 billion in global revenue.

The list reads like an algorithm spewed out movies people would pay $20 to watch. It also epitomizes Disney’s decade-long strategy. Everything belongs to a franchise, or is designed to potentially start a franchise. Even Frozen, released as a standalone movie in 2013 with a fully contained story, was brought back for a sequel and a series of smaller spinoffs because the demand was there. Plus, merchandise sales were through the roof.

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More at link.

[empedocles]

1. Concentration of power and wealth is not healthy

['We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.' - Justice Brandeis

[Javaman]

2. is/has disney become an entertainment monopoly?

It’s Time to Break Up Disney

https://prospect.org/power/time-to-break-up-disney-monopoly/

The company known for Mickey Mouse is now a sprawling conglomerate in entertainment and beyond, and that’s a big problem.

This has been an incredible year for the Walt Disney Company. Not only has Avengers: Endgame become the best-selling movie in box office history, but Disney currently holds all four slots for this year’s top-earning films. However, the company’s dominance isn’t quite something to celebrate.

At the moment, almost 38 percent of all U.S. box office sales in 2019 have gone to a Disney-owned movie, down from a peak of over 40 percent earlier this year. And that’s even before coming releases of Frozen 2, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker. As we can see by looking at the U.S. box office over the last 30 years, Disney has more than doubled its already significant market share in just five years, reaching an unprecedented point in modern history for a film company.

This wasn’t always the case. After a rather successful mid-1990s, Disney’s market share trended downwards through the late ’90s and 2000s, bottoming out at just under 10 percent in 2008. Then Disney started gobbling up the competition. In 2009, it purchased Marvel Studios, following up with the acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012. This gave an already large Hollywood film studio the rights to some of America’s most wildly successful film franchises: Marvel, Star Wars, and Indiana Jones.

The result was a shot in Disney’s arm. By the end of 2015, Disney had surpassed its 1990s peak thanks to the release of ten wildly successful Marvel films and two Lucasfilm movies, including the start of its lucrative new Star Wars trilogy. Since then, Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm have been behind another 14 movies for Disney, earning hundreds of billions of dollars in ticket sales and countless billions more in merchandise and property tie-ins.

more at link...

[Johonny]

3. The answer appears to be yes.

The question is, can they make this bank on original material because one has to think retread city can only last so long.

[roamer65]

4. Disney is also heavily concentrated in the television industry.

Disney channels, ABC, ESPN and now a lot of Fox’s old entertainment division.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_Television