With the close of 2019, a total of six movies released by Walt Disney Studios and their various sub-brands have grossed over a billion dollars at the worldwide box office: Marvel Comics adaptations Avengers: Endgame and Captain Marvel, remakes of animated films like The Lion King and Aladdin as well as sequels to highly successful animated films like Toy Story 4 and Frozen II. By January of next year, Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, will join the billion dollar club, bringing Disney's already record-shattering total to seven movies. Disney CEO's Bob Iger's sizable investment in the acquisition of studios Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm has paid off quite handsomely this year.
Since Iger took over Disney back in 2005 and started aggressively implementing his plan of acquiring "high quality, branded content" and building up Disney's IP inventory, this has been the film division's single biggest year, and probably the biggest box-office haul of any studio ever. Given that Disney basically has no plans of slowing down, and that things like inflation mean that billion dollar movies will eventually be easier to come by, and given further that James Cameron's sequel to Avatar is due to come out from Disney in 2021, the same year Disney will be releasing three new Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, it's reasonable to argue that they could conceivably scale such box office heights again in the future.
I will argue, however, that this is not quite as likely as it may seem, and I'll go over the reasons one by one. There are five key elements to Disney's record-breaking year that may or may not ever come together again.
1. Avengers: Endgame, for example, the linchpin of the Disney's phenomenal 2019 success story, wasn't just a movie, but a once-in-a-22-film event. It was the kind of payoff that had never been seen before on film and will most likely never be seen again, not even from Marvel itself. Sure, they could conceivably create pent-up demand for another Avengers megastory, but it won't feel new anymore, and when something has been done, diminishing returns is almost an inevitability. While I'm sure Marvel will continue to chug along like the well-oiled machine that it is, I'm almost certain that Endgame is a high point in history it won't be able to repeat. Marvel will most likely continue to churn out billion-dollar grossers at the rate of at least one a year, but I really, really doubt it'll be able to capture the zeitgeist in quite the same way again.
2. With The Lion King, Disney has adapted the last of the films that, from 1989 to 1994, marked the renaissance of its animation division under its then-boss Jeffrey Katzenberg. Almost every movie that came out after the original Lion King in 1994 followed a distinctly downward trend in terms of grosses, which culminated in Pixar knocking Disney off its perch at the top of the animation heap, and with Pixar bosses John Lasseter and Ed Catmull taking over Disney animation. Next up is Mulan, which has already proven to be a lightning rod for controversy thanks to comments of its lead star expressing support for the Hong Kong police, who have gained infamy for their rampant human rights violations in handling the protests that have shaken the city for the last several months. Not only that, but even before that became a talking point, it had the dubious distinction of being the very first adaptation of a Disney musical without any of the songs, and it carries an eyebrow-raising pricetag of $300 million, all on top of the fact that the original film was not quite the most loved of all Disney musicals. Assuming Mulan manages to do well, though, I doubt it'll scale Lion King heights, and I doubt they'll have two billion dollar adaptations in a single year.
3. Pixar is a reliable force at the box office, but the best thing about them is also the thing which casts into doubt Disney's ability to generate another 7 billion dollar grosser year. The fact that they're willing to take risks with original content rather than constantly regurgitating sequels for fans means billion-dollar hits like Toy Story 4 or The Inredibles will often take a back seat to original films like Onward and Soul, which may or may not hit the magic billion-dollar mark.
4. Disney animation, like Pixar, is quite capable, under its current management, of generating four-quadrant blockbusters that please critics and awards bodies (e.g. Zootopia), but as with Pixar, not all of its films are billion-dollar year sure things. Even sequels to successful films like Wreck-It-Ralph can still fall short of the ten-figure mark.
5. Finally, the future success of Star Wars after the conclusion of the Skywalker saga with this year's Star wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker is basically a huge question mark. The abject failure of last year's anthology prequel Solo exposed a huge chink in Lucasfilm's armor, and the tumult surrounding the new trilogy has further cemented a view shared by many fans that the single biggest problem of the Disney/Star Wars empire is that there isn't any real battle plan moving forward. The good news, though, is that film production has been brought to a halt while Lucasfilm takes a moment to rethink its approach to telling stories in this universe. Until they come out on the other side, though, their ability to make hits on the scale of Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, which benefited hugely from pent-up anticipation, is still in question.
In short, for all the fanboys and girls who sat through these seven films, I think it's quite possible we've all witnessed history this year.
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