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Mere days after it became the first studio to pass the $2 billion mark domestically this year, Disney has achieved an even bigger victory by becoming the first studio to generate more than $5 billion globally. Disney has seen most of its verticals deliver major hits this year, even though its latest release — Mufasa: The Lion King — emerged as a bit of a disappointment last week. A sequel to 2019’s The Lion King remake, which grossed over $1.6 billion globally, the movie could manage to generate only around $122 million worldwide in its global debut. But this was enough to send Disney’s 2024 total past that massive milestone.
The majority of the studio’s global revenue came from two films — Pixar’s Inside Out 2, which grossed nearly $1.7 billion worldwide, and Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine, which made over $1.3 billion. More recently, the studio’s Moana 2 emerged as another possible contender for the billion-dollar club; the animated sequel has made nearly $800 million worldwide so far. Some of the Disney’s other major hits this year include two other 20th Century Studios titles — Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes ($397 million worldwide) and Alien: Romulus ($350 million).
Incidentally, each of these movies also received positive reviews. This is about as remarkable as the commercial success, because the post-pandemic era has been hit-or-miss on both fronts for mainstream fare. Disney is the first studio to pass the $5 billion milestone in a calendar year since 2019; it’s the sixth time since 2010 that the studio has hit this benchmark. Last year was particularly difficult for the studio, with a handful of under-performers such as Wish, Haunted Mansion, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and The Marvels.
Unwanted Franchise Movies Took a Hit This Year
What’s also clear with this year’s slate of Disney hits is that there’s enough of an audience for all kinds of cinema, as long as it’s IP-related. Unlike 2023, when two of the biggest hits were Barbie and Oppenheimer, the highest-grossing films of 2024 are all a part of some franchise or another. But with the massive under-performance of Warner Bros. films such as Joker: Folie à Deux and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, not to mention the two Sony releases Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter, there’s enough proof to suggest that not all franchise films are bulletproof. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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Simba, having become king of the Pride Lands, is determined for his cub to follow in his paw prints while the origins of his late father Mufasa are explored.
Director Barry Jenkins
Runtime 118 Minutes
English (US) ·