Disney spent billions of dollars acquiring brand like Lucasfilm, Marvel Studios, and Pixar, and it’s easy to see how much that has paid off. In just film business alone in 2016, Disney finished at the top of the six major studio heap for the third year in a row with a staggering $2.5 billion in profit. That’s what they actually took back into the company, an increase of 4% from the already high profits of 2015.
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While Disney, Time Warner, and 21st Century Fox all saw increases in profitability – Time Warner stepped up 15% to 1.7 billion dollars, Fox up a huge 21% to $1.3 billion, a decrease in profit for NBC Universal, a massive nearly billion dollar write-down for Sony, and a catastrophic 1,556% decrease in profit for Viacom/Paramount (they wound up losing $364 million at the box office, not counting the $115 million write-down for late release Monster Trucks) means the industry as a whole is down 20 percent in profits from the year before. Sony and Viacom/Paramount both posting losses is the first time two of the big six have been in the losing category since 2009, according to THR.
The profit and revenues here are tracked slightly differently, making Disney’s win even bigger – Disney tracks their TV business completely separately from their movie category, while Time Warner, Fox, and Sony all include TV in the same numbers.
2016 saw Disney take the top three spots in the US and worldwide, with Captain America: Civil War leading the charge (currently the #2 rated comic book movie all-time on the ComicBook.com composite rankings with an 87.68 composite), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story contributing over a billion from its December release, and Finding Dory helping carry the all-ages and summer box office also topping a billion dollars. That’s one from each of their three major acquisitions of this century all contributing. Of Disney’s other brands, Walt Disney Animation Studios had a major win with the $1 billion-plus Zootopia, and Walt Disney Studios came in at $966 million with The Jungle Book. A true team victory for the House of Mouse.
Time Warner’s 2016 profit was a company record at $1.7 billion, as both DC Films releases and the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts were profits for the company. Despite negative critical response to those two DC films, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad, they combined for over $1.5 billion at the global box office.
Deadpool led the way for Fox (if you’re sensing a theme here, yes, superheroes rule the box office), while TV helped them along to the highest increase in profit year over year of the six studios.
NBCUniversal profited – but decreased 43% year over year, in a year without a Fast and Furious movie, and a year following Jurassic World and Minions.
Looking forward to 2017, things should look up for Sony with Spider-Man: Homecoming, Jumanji, and The Dark Tower. WB looks for their first billion dollar DC Films release (that means since Man of Steel) with either Wonder Woman and/or Justice League. While Disney has a smaller slate than 2016, they’re still stacked: Marvel Studios has two films, WDS has Beauty and the Beast and Pirates 5, and Pixar has two 2017 releases. Oh yeah, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi rounds out the year for them again. Paramount meanwhile looks to bounce back with a strong international performance from xXx, and Ghost in the Shell, Baywatch, and Transformers all on the horizon in the first half of the year.
