2023 is coming to a close, and it looks like it’ll be the first time in many years that Walt Disney Studios will not have a single movie crack $1 billion at the global box office.
As Variety reminds us, 2023 will be the first time since 2014 that Disney did not have a movie that made $1 billion or more at the box office. (This does not count the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021). For comparison, in 2019, Disney had a whopping seven movies that made at least $1 billion.
Disney’s biggest success of 2023 was Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which earned more than $845 million at the box office. This was no doubt a huge result, but some analysts expected it to reach $1 billion or perform better than its predecessor, but it did not achieve either.
“Disney set an impossibly high bar for itself during the 2010s, firing every cannon in its arsenal,” Boxoffice Pro analyst Shawn Robbins told Variety. “The downside to success is that it becomes expected every time. The studio was always going to be in a challenged position when the well started to run dry.”
Some of Disney’s other big movies in 2023 included Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, The Haunted Mansion, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Elemental, and The Little Mermaid. Disney’s The Marvels, meanwhile, debuted earlier in November to the slowest start in MCU history. These movies have all made lots and lots of money, but by Disney’s standards, they aren’t as successful as some of the company’s releases in previous years. Disney’s newest movie, the animated film Wish, opened to soft numbers over its Thanksgiving weekend debut.
To put things more into perspective, Disney’s Avatar: The Way of Water, which released at the end of 2022, has made more money in the US in 2023 ($283 million) than Quantumania ($214 million), The Dial of Destiny ($174 million), and The Marvels ($76 million) have earned in total in the US this year.
Looking ahead to 2024, Disney has a number of high-profile releases lined up, including Inside Out 2, Mufasa, Deadpool 3, and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.