6 = 1 + 5: How Disney could be set to leave the rest of the major studios behind.


Barely a day goes by without an announcement of an upcoming sequel, remake or reboot (and even the occasional squeakquel) as the Hollywood studios scramble to find their next box office smash.

Accompanying these announcements are choruses of exasperated sighs, pages of disgruntled tweets and cries of “Is nothing sacred?” from movie goers who are growing increasingly frustrated with the repetitive nature of the films making their way to cinemas from Tinseltown.

Hollywood’s propensity for sequels and the like is nothing new, but there has been a noticeable change in the last year or so with studios becoming more aggressive (or perhaps desperate) in their pursuit of that lucrative pay day. Fox has reportedly invested a whopping $900 million in James Cameron’s three Avatar sequels. Before the first film had made its way into cinemas, Warner Bros. announced that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them would be the first of five new films in J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world.

Why the sudden rush? The answer perhaps lies in box office numbers.


Eddie Redymayne as Newt in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them


CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS

I’ve collated lifetime worldwide box office grosses for 294 films: the top 7 grossing films from each of the 6 big Hollywood studios (Buena Vista – distributor for Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros.) and their subsidiaries in each of the last 7 years (2010-2016). 7 x 6 x 7 = 294. In addition to the grosses, I’ve included the ranking of each film in its corresponding yearly worldwide chart. For example, Deadpool grossed $783,112,979 and was the 9th highest grossing film of 2016.

One quick caveat: I am judging a film's success solely on its box office performance, which doesn't consider either the budget of the film or the studio's cut of the film's takings (which varies from territory to territory). Therefore, this analysis can't consider true profitability, but works on the basic principle that the higher grossing films made more money for the studios, either through the box office or other secondary avenues (merchandise, games etc), than the lower grossing films.

I devised a universal scoring system that would allow me to more easily compare the performances of the studios across different years and with different numbers of films under consideration from each studio. I assigned 42 scores, one for each of the 6 studios in each of the 7 years, based on the box office grosses and global rankings of all 294 films (i.e. the top 7 films from each studio in each year). A score was assigned based on the total global box office and the total global rankings. The best performance received a score of 1 and the other 41 performances received scores between 0 and 1 that correlated to how well they performed against the best performance.

I then produced a 2nd set of 42 scores in the same manner, that considered only the top 6 films from each studio in each year; then a 3rd that considered only the top 5 films and so on. I produced 7 sets of scores in total (each one considering fewer films than the last), with the 7th set only considering the top 1 film from each studio in each year.  

For a more detailed explanation on how each score was calculated, please follow this link to an additional post that explains the process step by step. 

To summarise all that waffle in the last few paragraphs: 


The closer a score is to 1, the better.

If you chart all of the scores on one graph – with the number of films in consideration on the x-axis and the calculated score on the y-axis – it is (not surprisingly) a mess but it looks something like this:



In fact, I’ve only included it to highlight the one set of scores, shown here in red. A particularly good year for a studio that not only scored well with 1 film, but scored better with the inclusion of more films and even achieved the perfect score of 1 when 6 and 7 films are considered. You may already have worked out which year and studio it is, but let’s split the scores up and have a closer look.

YEAR BY YEAR

Firstly, I grouped all of the scores by year to show the changing fortune for the studios in each year. For all of the graphs in this section, the y-axis values indicate the score and the x-axis values indicate the number of films included when determining the score.


The two billion dollar hits of 2010, Toy Story 3 and Alice in Wonderland, gave Buena Vista a significant advantage of the others to begin with, but their performance was brought more in line with the other studios when looking beyond those two big hits. Warner Bros. performed well thanks to the penultimate Harry Potter film and Christopher Nolan’s Inception. In 2010, Paramount was the distributor for both the Marvel studios and DreamWorks Animation films and so the likes of Shrek Forever After and Iron Man 2 saw them perform well too. All studios ultimately end up with a score of under 0.5 with 7 films.
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The final Harry Potter film brought in over $1.3 billion to put Warner Bros. way ahead when considering just the top film from each studio, but with major support coming only from The Hangover Part II and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Paramount’s strength in depth saw them perform best in this year, thanks to Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and a pair of films from both Marvel and DreamWorks Animation.
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The Avengers was the first Marvel film released by Buena Vista and it’s $1.5 billion topped the box office that year, but the gap to Buena Vista’s second best film was over $975 million which again brought them back into the main pack. Sony had a better year than previous thanks to the likes of Skyfall, The Amazing Spider-Man and MIB 3.
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A better year for most studios, scoring better thanks to the performance of their smaller films. Warner Bros. in particular scored much better with more films in consideration. Frozen and Iron Man 3 produced a good initial score for Buena Vista but they again didn’t have the strength in depth to maintain an exceptionally high score.
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Another Transformers film gave Paramount a good start whilst Buena Vista didn’t have a big billion-dollar release and ultimately scored similar to the others with 7 films under consideration. The best score with 7 films was from Fox thanks to the likes of X-Men: Days of Future Past, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and How to Train Your Dragon 2. A poor year for Universal whose best performing film was Lucy, with a box office total of over $463 million.
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A poor 2014 was offset by a very good 2015 for Universal whose 3 big hits (Jurassic World, Furious 7 and Minions) grossed over $4.3 billion, which was enough to see it compete with Buena Vista and the $2 billion dollar smash that was Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. 

We’ve yet to see the performance that I highlighted earlier which means that it must belong to a studio in 2016.
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Somewhat unsurprisingly, it’s Buena Vista/Disney that blew away the competition. Their 7 big releases (CA: Civil War, Rogue One, Finding Dory, Zootopia, Jungle Book, Doctor Strange and Moana) occupied 7 of the top 12 spots and took an average of over $935 million. In comparison, Paramount highest grossing film was Star Trek Beyond on just over $343 million, resulting in one of the worst performances in this analysis.

STEPPING UP THEIR GAME

That 2016 performance for Buena Vista/Disney is remarkable, even when placed alongside their other yearly performances.


They have had some of the big hits from each of the last 7 years but the lack of depth in each year prevented them from pulling away from the competition. It may just be a one-off and subsequent years may be more in line with previous years. Then again, maybe not.

2018 will see the release of (deep breath) Black Panther, A Wrinkle in Time, Avengers: Infinity War, Untitled Han Solo Movie, The Incredibles 2, Ant-Man and the Wasp, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, Wreck-It Ralph 2 and Mary Poppins Returns. 2019 brings another Avengers film, live-action versions of Lion King, Dumbo and Mulan, Frozen 2, Toy Story 4 and the small matter of Star Wars: Episode IX – Don’t F*** it up, Colin Trevorrow J.J. Abrams (working title).

Disney have had bad years: 2011 was probably the worst year, but even their bad years tend to be better than the bad years of the other major studios. You only have too look at the equivalent graphs for the other major studios to see that the odd good year is only offsetting some bad years. Note the difference in y-axis values on each graph for a indication of how well each studio performed.







BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE

This surge from Disney is the result of some smart acquisitions and an aggressive release schedule. They took over the release of Marvel’s films, beginning with 2012’s The Avengers, after a $4.2 billion acquisition deal in 2009 and are now releasing at least two Marvel films each year. Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012 and will have released 5 Star Wars films in 5 years by the end of 2019. They’ve also realised the value in their old animated titles and have begun remaking these as live-action versions.

For the next few years, Disney have 5 main franchise strands to rely on each year: Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, Disney Animation, and Live-Action remakes. In an attempt to keep chase with Disney, the other studios have looked to their own franchises and intellectual properties, to try and establish similarly reliable strands.


Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie and Chris Hemsworth as Thor in upcoming Marvel sequel Thor: Ragnarok

Fox have stepped up production on films in their X-Men franchise, with 3 films set for release in 2018 alone. As mentioned previously, Fox have $900 million into James Cameron’s Avatar sequels and will be hoping that they can capture the global audience like the 2009 original did. They also have the Blue Sky (Ice Age, Rio) animations but will no longer distribute Dreamworks animations, which will move to Universal in time for 2019’s How to Train Your Dragon 3. 

Universal have been buoyed by the success of Illumination’s Despicable Me franchise and The Secret Life of Pets. Only time will tell if 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom will match the $1.6 billion success of its predecessor. 3 further sequels were ordered off the back of the success of Furious 7, with film number 8 bringing in over $1.2 billion. However, the attempt to kick start a ‘Dark Universe’ based on its old creature/monster properties has not been overly successful; this year’s The Mummy was met with critical derision and only $400 million at the box office.


Tom Cruise as Nick Morton in The Mummy

The DC films at Warner Bros. have not been hits with the critics but they are big hits with audiences, although perhaps not quite as big as hoped. The first Fantastic Beasts film did good-to-great business too and the LEGO animation films have given them another avenue of revenue that they might not have anticipated.

Sony have returned to the web-slinger well once again for more Spider-Man movies (including a Venom spinoff). Their animation arm is becoming more established, leading to upcoming sequels for Angry Birds and Hotel Transylvania. However, they could be set to lose the James Bond films now that the distribution rights are up for grabs again. 

Paramount are pushing for more Transformers films, but there’s been a big drop in takings with the latest entry, Transformers: The Last Knight. Paramount Animation has been set up to try and muscle into the crowded animation game; Amusement Park and a Gnomeo & Juliet sequel (Sherlock Gnomes) are two of the titles currently being produced. xXx: Return of Xander Cage proved to be a big enough hit for Paramount to order another sequel.

THE BIG PICTURE

The rise of streaming services and the ‘Golden Age’ of television are offering viewers more high quality content than ever before, and all from the comfort of their own home. And yet, the reaction from major studios has generally been to more aggressively pursue the strategies that have proved successful in the past. That’s worthwhile strategy for Disney who comfortably have the most high profile slate, but less so for the others who, to put it bluntly, don’t. The release schedule is too crowded and it’s simply no longer viable to expect audiences to turn up for all revived intellectual properties or hastily ordered sequels.

With Disney set to dominate the global box office for the near future, the other 5 major studios face a decision: consolidate a position behind Disney and weather out the storm, or cut their losses and look to find a less precarious position in the movie business. Disney’s dominance will not last forever and the movie business may be in a different state altogether. The Marvel Cinematic Bubble will burst eventually and there are only so many old animated films Disney can remake. Rumours this week that the next Star Wars film – likely to be scheduled for 2020 – will be centred on Obi-Wan Kenobi were not wholly well received, nor were the (possibly less concrete) rumours of future films focussed on Boba Fett, Jabba the Hut. 

In five years' time, audiences may have grown weary of these franchises and may be looking for something fresh and original. It’s not easy to predict audience taste several years in advance, but as the traditional distinctions between television and film continue to fade away, the major studios will have to evolve to survive.


All box office data taken from www.boxofficemojo.com. All data correct as of 31/07/2017.

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