Disney had held the top spot as the highest-grossing studio at the box office since 2015, but 2023 saw Universal Pictures take the lead. It was an $80 million lead for Universal as they grossed a staggering $4.907 billion in worldwide ticket sales against Disney’s $4.827 billion, which gave the studio a second spot for the first time in close to a decade. Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, and Paramount earned 3rd, 4th, and 5th place respectively per Variety.
Disney shared an argument to the press indicating they attribute their earnings difference to having fewer movies slated for the year. The argument holds water to a certain extent because Universal had 24 movies come out against Disney’s 17, they added proudly that they have the most movies in the top 10 for the year, indeed they had 4 of the highest-grossing titles.
Several sources attribute popular blockbusters to have given Universal Pictures the win for 2023, among the successful films “The Super Mario Bros. Movie”($1.3 billion), “Oppenheimer” ($950 million), and “M3GAN” ($180 million), the last of which doesn’t come close to some of the top earning titles for 2023 but had a huge net profit close to $79 million.
Speaking of profits, although Disney had huge success with films such as “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” ($845 million), other films that performed well at the box office struggled against their hefty budgets. One such film was “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”, which grossed $476.1 million against a budget of $200 million, this positioned it as the 10th-highest-grossing movie of the year; the problem is studios do not earn the entire value of ticket sales, so, in the end, the film still lost money.
It is an exciting time for film studios all around and we can not wait to see who will take the top spot in 2024.
