Disney Becomes First Studio to Earn $10 Billion at the Box Office in a Single Year

Disney is having the biggest year of any studio in box office history. Frozen 2 has earned $919.7 million worldwide. With that, Disney’s 2019 box office gross total stands at $9.997 billion. The studio is expected to cross the $10 billion mark in the next day, becoming the first studio ever to accomplish the feat. This comes after Disney already beat its own record for the highest yearly studio box office total, set in 2016 with $7.6 billion. Disney’s 2019 total doesn’t include the box office gross for movies released by 20th Century Fox, which Disney purchased earlier this year. Including those numbers would already push Disney close to $12 billion for the year. This total is also expected to surge further when Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker opens on December 20th.

Disney’s biggest earner this year is Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame, which became the highest-grossing movie of all time with $2.798 billion worldwide. Second is The Lion King, earning $1.656 billion globally. Marvel Studios’ other 2019 release, Captain Marvel, earned $1.130 billion. Pixar’s Toy Story 4 earned $1.074 billion. Disney’s Aladdin live-action remake earned $1.051 billion. Frozen 2 is expected to cross $1 billion next weekend. That means that after becoming the first studio to have five $1 billion movies in a single year, Disney will likely end the year with seven such films.

Frozen 2 has received positive reviews, though it hasn’t been as glowingly received as the first film. ComicBook.com’s Charlie Ridgely criticized the sequel for playing it too safe in his three-star review. “Frozen 2 is a tale of two halves,” he writes. “Fortunately for everyone, the better of those two halves comes second and leaves you feeling mostly fulfilled when walking out of the theater. None of it is nearly as warm or magical as the original Frozen, but there’s a certain charm to be found in the bold and dark adventure late in the film that still makes it worth the journey.”

Original Frozen directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee return for the sequel. The film features new music from the composers and songwriters of the original film, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, and Ciarán Hinds reprise their voice acting roles from the original Frozen. Sterling K. Brown, Evan Rachel Wood, Alfred Molina, Martha Plimpton, Jason Ritter, Rachel Matthews, and Jeremy Sisto join them as new characters.