Disney (and others) at the Box Office - Current State of Affairs

[Nevermore525]

Disney Leads U.S. Box Office With $1.1B Year To Date, But Warner Bros Is Billion-Bound Too

Disney is leading all majors at the U.S./Canada box office with $1.1 billion, however, Warner Bros isn't far behind with $1 billion.

deadline.com

Disney Leads U.S. Box Office With $1.1B Year To Date, But Warner Bros Is Billion-Bound Too​

As we near the half year point of 2025 for the domestic box office, which is currently running at $3.7 billion(+23% over 2024) for Jan. 1-June 15 frame, DisneyStudios is leading all majors with $1.1 billion.

That’s not a surprise with a string of mass-appealing movies, i.e. Lilo & Stitch ($371.7M) and Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Brave New World ($200.5M). Even the ones that didn’t work to the top of their potential are providing a lot of cushion, read Marvel’s Thunderbolts* ($188.9M) and Snow White ($87.2M).

 

[Tony the Tigger]

OK, why are they hiding stitch’s numbers for Wednesday?

 

[Disney Irish]

OK, why are they hiding stitch’s numbers for Wednesday?

Yesterday (June 19th) was a holiday in the US, so many studios (Disney in this case) are slower to release results to the trades on holidays, so I expect an update later today for both days.

 

[TP2000]

Preview numbers from yesterday are out for Elio, and it looks to be settling in to 3rd place at its box office debut weekend.

That's not good box office obviously, but with the news that "last month's news" was wrong and its budget is only $150 Million, it might be able to pull an Elemental and break $500 Million globally? With a $150 Million production budget for Elio, a burden is suddenly lifted. I'm feeling unburdened. Are you feeling unburdened?

 

[Disney Analyst]

My co-workers sees every new movie, and caught Elio yesterday. Said it was actually quite good, him and his wife both liked it.

This really could have an Elemental type run, if word of mouth continues to be good.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

ShopDisney.com only has one plastic figure playset and three T-shirts on offer for Elio. Either Disney Corporate knew they had a stinker that wasn't worth merchandising with this movie, or they are still smarting over the disastrous performance of the Lightyear and Wish merchandise. What a shame.

Probably a little of both

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

As far as how Snow White will be “remembered”?

Since nobody saw it…not at all.

 

[LittleBuford]

My co-workers sees every new movie, and caught Elio yesterday. Said it was actually quite good, him and his wife both liked it.

This really could have an Elemental type run, if word of mouth continues to be good.

I saw it today. It’s very good! Classically Pixar and full of heart. I’m not sure why the buzz before its release was so negative.

 

[Tony the Tigger]

Yesterday (June 19th) was a holiday in the US, so many studios (Disney in this case) are slower to release results to the trades on holidays, so I expect an update later today for both days.

Aware. Elio’s Thursday posted before Stitch’s Wednesday. May have been an estimate since it was a perfectly round number.

 

[Disney Irish]

Aware. Elio’s Thursday posted before Stitch’s Wednesday. May have been an estimate since it was a perfectly round number.

Yes it was an estimate rather than the actual which is why it showed up ahead of Stitch. Stitch is now listed for both Wednesday and Thursday.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Elio was rocking a pretty decent critic score…so I hope that accurate and not fluff

On the potential downside - the lack of advertising and merch tie ins is stark.

I think maybe they were shell shocked by wish…which likely has contributed to a worldwide spike in pfas levels and a huge add to the pacific trash island

 

[Disney Irish]

Elio was rocking a pretty decent critic score…so I hope that accurate and not fluff

On the potential downside - the lack of advertising and merch tie ins is stark.

I think maybe they were shell shocked by wish…which likely has contributed to a worldwide spike in pfas levels and a huge add to the pacific trash island

As was discussed in this thread I think its actually more the norm for limited merch tie-ins to be released by Disney for a movie over the last 10-20 years. So over stocking shelves with merch for movies like Wish was the exception. And so this is a return to a more normal limited release of merch.

 

[easyrowrdw]

I saw it today. It’s very good! Classically Pixar and full of heart. I’m not sure why the buzz before its release was so negative.

Maybe it’s due to the delay and apparent retooling of the movie? Honestly, the trailer doesn’t really intrigue me but I’m still more interested in Elio than the Stitch remake. My kids feel the opposite though because they love Stitch.

 

[MisterPenguin]

or half the cost "last month's news" proclaimed.

Proclaimed by a blogger on a theme park web site that happens to have multiple sources for Pixar's financials?

Learn to skeptic.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

As was discussed in this thread I think its actually more the norm for limited merch tie-ins to be released by Disney for a movie over the last 10-20 years. So over stocking shelves with merch for movies like Wish was the exception. And so this is a return to a more normal limited release of merch.

It seems to be more correlated to what they view as guaranteed appeal.

The problem is they whiff more now

Merch heavy titles include the Princess titles…the very sequeled sequels…and the occasional large miss like Lightyear

 

[BrianLo]

Disney Leads U.S. Box Office With $1.1B Year To Date, But Warner Bros Is Billion-Bound Too

Disney is leading all majors at the U.S./Canada box office with $1.1 billion, however, Warner Bros isn't far behind with $1 billion.

deadline.com

Disney Leads U.S. Box Office With $1.1B Year To Date, But Warner Bros Is Billion-Bound Too​

As we near the half year point of 2025 for the domestic box office, which is currently running at $3.7 billion(+23% over 2024) for Jan. 1-June 15 frame, DisneyStudios is leading all majors with $1.1 billion.

That’s not a surprise with a string of mass-appealing movies, i.e. Lilo & Stitch ($371.7M) and Marvel Studios’ Captain America: Brave New World ($200.5M). Even the ones that didn’t work to the top of their potential are providing a lot of cushion, read Marvel’s Thunderbolts* ($188.9M) and Snow White ($87.2M).

Before Box Office Mojo became irrelevant, they used to track this more thoroughly. The record for the fastest Studio to 1B domestically is still Disney’s at 128 days in 2016. I assume the latter 2010’s had good but not at that level runs.

For reference the record prior to this was briefly held by Universal and it was 164 days.

It’s largely a reflection of a strong holiday holdover from the year prior to get them off to a good start; but the fact we were 170 days into 2025 and they already domestically over 1.1 is a lot of raw box office. And I know, yadda yadda, inflation. But this is why their last quarter looked so much better for the studios than some of our pundits prognosticated. Moana and Mufasa did a lot of work “q1 2025/fiscal q2” and obviously stitch now q2.

 

[DisneyWarrior27]

OK, folks.

The CinemaScore for Disney/Pixar's #Elio has been revealed and it’s… exactly the same score #Elemental got: an “A.”

Thank god.

It didn’t get the “A-“ and “B” that 2022’s 2 sci-fi Disney films, Lightyear and Strange World, got and it’s the 1st sci-fi Disney or Pixar film since the original animated #LiloAndStitch from 2002 and #WallE from 2008 to get that score, and both went on to be box office hits/or award-winning films, too.

It might be premature of me to say this but this score MIGHT be a good sign for the legs of #Elio at the box office, just like #Elemental had, and we may as well see this film avoid losing money for Disney and either breaks even or becomes a sleeper hit, especially since a) it has no quality competition until #TheBadGuys2 on August 1st and b) the next animated film #Smurfs looks like a piece of garbage that will be the actual one to flop.

As Dan Murrell says, CinemaScore is usually a good indicator for how a film will perform at the box office and isn’t something that can be gamed or manipulated like an IMDB, Metacritic, or Rotten Tomatoes user score.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

 

[Disney Irish]

It seems to be more correlated to what they view as guaranteed appeal.

The problem is they whiff more now

Merch heavy titles include the Princess titles…the very sequeled sequels…and the occasional large miss like Lightyear

As the saying goes correlation is not necessarily causation. But I think its easy to say that anything that didn't have a large merch push, which is easily a huge number of their movies since and including Frozen, they didn't view as having a huge guaranteed appeal.

So to come back to what I said, its more the norm for there not to be a huge merch push, so there is not anything to be read into it.

 

[Sirwalterraleigh]

Before Box Office Mojo became irrelevant, they used to track this more thoroughly. The record for the fastest Studio to 1B domestically is still Disney’s at 128 days in 2016. I assume the latter 2010’s had good but not at that level runs.

For reference the record prior to this was briefly held by Universal and it was 164 days.

It’s largely a reflection of a strong holiday holdover from the year prior to get them off to a good start; but the fact we were 170 days into 2025 and they already domestically over 1.1 is a lot of raw box office. And I know, yadda yadda, inflation. But this is why their last quarter looked so much better for the studios than some of our pundits prognosticated. Moana and Mufasa did a lot of work “q1 2025/fiscal q2” and obviously stitch now q2.

Mojo just shows you the numbers…the facts

Are we not into math now? Is this the apologist version of “blame the media”?

 

[BrianLo]

Mojo just shows you the numbers…the facts

Are we not into math now? Is this the apologist version of “blame the media”?

Uh no, why assume the worst of me? I’m not an apologist, you should know I’m quite facts based.

What I was referencing is that Box office mojo was acquired by Amazon. All of its actual interesting data metrics were paywalled in 2019. Including the tracker with the fastest studios to 1B. There was a huge turn against it and this is what gave rise to “the numbers”, which we typically use more frequently. It has essentially provided a lot of the useful back end features for free that we used to have with BOMojo. But lost is any ability for me to see this metric from either site.

Box office mojo used to also provide a lot of weekend commentary as Deadline does. But that author team got the heave ho by Amazon.

This was all I’m referencing, the growing irrelevancy when it used to basically be the be all end all.