Now that the dust has settled on 2018, ComScore is reporting that the movie industry enjoyed a record year at the box office over the past twelve months with a $41.7 billion worldwide haul – almost a fifth of which ended up in Disney’s coffers.
Globally, Disney’s releases pulled in $7.33 billion in total in 2018, the second-highest in history for a studio after the Mouse House’s own record haul of $7.61 billion in 2016. Domestically, it also set a new studio record, earning $3.09 billion for a 26% market share of North America’s $11.9 billion (another all-time high).
Disney has distributed three of the top five highest-grossing movies of 2018 in Avengers: Infinity War ($2.049 billion), Black Panther ($1.243 billion) and Incredibles 2 ($1.243 billion); the only other studio to reach the billion dollar mark was Universal with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ($1.309 billion).
In North America, Universal landed in second place with $1.96 billion, followed by Warner Bros. on $1.93 billion, Sony on $1.28 billion, Fox with $1.24 billion, Paramount with $757 million, Lionsgate with $389 million, STX with $296.6 million and MGM with $164 million.
Given some of the huge releases that Disney has in store for this year – see Avengers: Endgame, Aladdin, The Lion King, Dumbo, Toy Story 4, Frozen 2 and Star Wars: Episode IX – and the impending Fox acquisition, it seems nailed on that 2019 will be another huge, record-breaking year for the studio as it continues to pull further and further ahead of the competition.
Via Variety