Disney Sets New Record At Domestic Box Office in 2016

With a one-two-three punch from studios Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Marvel Studios, Walt Disney Studios set new overall box office records in both domestic and global takes. The push for domestic box office came from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the mid-December release that marked the first of the new standalone films in the franchise.

From January 1 to December 31, 2016, Disney as a whole grossed $3.001 billion in U.S. box office receipts, and an addition $4.604 billion internationally. That makes it the first studio to break the $7 billion global mark, and it did it with over 600 million dollars to spare. That’s also a 1.15 billion dollar increase over 2015 – over 20%.

NEXT: How Disney Won In 2016

The conglomerate pulled in huge wins from Captain America: Civil War, the highest worldwide grossing movie of the year, Finding Dory, the top grosser in the U.S., and Rogue One, which topped the UK box office chart and came in second to Dory after just two full weeks of release. Zootopia, from core brand Walt Disney Animation Studios, and The Jungle Book from Walt Disney Studios, were also solid performers for the house of mouse, getting all five of their primary teams involved on the year.

Of Disney’s other major releases in 2016, only Doctor Strange could be said to have performed well, the best origin story for a solo hero from Marvel Studios since 2008’s Iron Man. The other WDAS project Moana came in south of the prior three (Frozen, Zootopia, Big Hero 6) despite positive reviews and a buzzworthy soundtrack.

Disney’s other WDS releases included Alice Through the Looking Glass, which was saved from total disaster by a healthy overseas pull but still likely turned out as a loss or very nearly even, The BFG, which had a similar ratio but not as much success and likely ended in a write-off loss, and Pete’s Dragon, which did manage to turn a (small) profit.

All three of the top performing studios, Lucasfilm, Marvel, and Pixar, were purchased under the purview of current CEO Bob Iger. Lucasfilm, the most recent of those, was purchased for around $4 billion about 4 years ago. With a gross of over $2 billion for Star Wars: The Force Awakens last year, a fast-approaching billion dollar gross for Rogue One, and over three billion in toy sales in 2015, it’s safe to say they’ve gotten their money’s worth.

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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is in theaters now. Directed by Gareth Edwards, it’s the first of the new standalone features from Lucasfilm and Disney, which take place outside the core “Skywalker Saga” of films noted by an Episode number. Rogue One tells the story of the small band of rebels that were tasked with stealing the plans to the first Death Star. The story spins directly off the opening crawl from the original Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. In that crawl, it read: “Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire. During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.”