LOS ANGELES, Dec 17 ― With The Lion King, Frozen 2, Aladdin and Toy Story, Disney was counting on nostalgia to bring in audiences in 2019. It was a gamble that has proved to be highly lucrative for the giant of Burbank, California which has now become the first film studio to exceed ten billion dollars in sales in a single year. And this figure is likely to increase in the coming days with the release of the next Star Wars.
Avengers: Endgame, The Lion King, Frozen 2 are just some of the cinema blockbusters, which have made 2019 a bumper year for the Californian entertainment empire. With record box-office receipts, Disney is once again the leading studio of the year. It is a success that has surpassed all expectations for the company, which has now become the first ever studio in history to exceed an accumulated total of US$10 billion (RM41.4 billion) in sales worldwide.
This impressive figure could even be US$2 billion higher if you include Fox titles, for which Disney has acquired the rights since the Disney-21th Century Fox merger at the end of March.
Six films among the biggest successes of 2019
Films like Captain Marvel (US$1.12 billion), Toy Story 4 (US$1.07 billion), Aladdin (US$1.05 billion) and the live-action remake of The Lion King (US$1.65 billion) paved the way for Disney to exceed its previous record of US$7.6 billion in worldwide sales, which it set in 2016. But the real breakthrough came with the humongous international box-office success of Avengers: Endgame. The 22nd film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe pulverised all of its competitors, and even broke the all-time box-office receipts record set by Avatar with an accumulated total of US$2.797 billion.
Disney can lay claim to six of the 10 biggest grossing films of the year: Avengers: Endgame, The Lion King, Captain Marvel, Toy Story 4, Aladdin and Frozen 2. After just a few weeks in theatres, the second instalment in the adventures of Elsa and Anna has already passed the milestone of US$1 billion in sales.
This massive box-office force is not about to slow down anytime soon. With a few weeks left to run in 2019, the Mouse House is almost certain to hit another home run with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which is due out in theatres on December 20 in North America. In all likelihood, the final episode in the Skywalker saga will also be another global box-office blockbuster, and the seventh 2019 Disney release to accumulate more than one billion dollars. ― AFP-Relaxnews
