Disney Dethroned?

As I remarked in a prior post Deadline is now in the midst of its annual "Most Valuable Blockbuster" tournament. Starting from the bottom of the top ten they have already identified the tenth and ninth-ranking films--the latter of which is Guardians of the Galaxy, which they make clear is Disney's only film to make the list in 2023.

Just one film--and that a mere #9 ranker.

Compare that to how Disney fared in the glory years of the mid- and late 2010s. Disney had the #1 film in 2015 (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), and four in the top ten. In 2016 it missed the #1 position, with its highest-ranking film Rogue One getting just the number three spot, but had five films in the top ten. And then it claimed the #1 position three years running, all while maintaining a disproportionate presence generally, with three films in 2017 and 2018 each (the top three in 2018's case), and then in the annus mirabilis of 2019, having an astonishing seven of the top ten, including, again, the top three (Avengers: Endgame, Frozen 2, The Lion King, Captain Marvel, Toy Story 4, Aladdin, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker).*

Of course, that things went this way is unlikely to be very surprising to anyone who has paid attention to the box office during the last year or so, given how even in a year of flops Disney's offerings were conspicuous disappointments--Indiana Jones 5 and Captain Marvel 2 most notoriously, but also The Little Mermaid remake, Ant-Man 3, Wish and Elemental (which may have managed to turn a profit, but still looked a weak performer by Pixar's long exceptional standard). Indeed, it was my guess that on the list of the biggest loss-makers that always accompanies Deadline's list of the biggest profit-makers, Captain Marvel 2 and Indiana Jones 5 would occupy two of the top three spots--all as Disney would be represented elsewhere.

Still, it seems only fair to ask how this came about. Simply put, during the twenty-first century Disney pursued a particular strategy--"Buy up every top-line franchise and brand you can and exploit them ruthlessly." Doing this with Lucasfilm, Marvel and Pixar, as well as its own animated classics-heavy brand, it scored much more than its share of hits. (Again, seven of the top ten most profitable films of 2019 as reckoned at the time!) But the market has changed--so much so that the question now seems to be whether Disney, and for that matter everyone else in Hollywood, is capable of changing with it.

* One may, of course, quibble with the numbers in hindsight given that the procedures of the British film subsidy system keep indicating higher outlays than are usually reported in these lists (as was the case with Avengers 3 and 4), but Disney is unlikely to be the only studio playing games here, and it seems to me that even taking this into account this still broadly reflects how things stood at the time.