46 Films Have Made $1 Billion. Most Are Disney.
The Rise of Skywalker recently passed the $1 billion threshold. That makes it the 46th movie to accomplish such a feat. You can check out the full list yourself, but there's no point. You can guess what's on there. It's a lot of superhero movies with a handful of globally popular franchises and children's animated flicks mixed in.
The list might be interesting to read out of sheer curiosity to see which movies performed better than others. Like how the hell did Aquaman make slightly more billions than Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King and three different Star Wars movies? Were people ironically watching Aquaman as they are now with Cats but wound up accidentally making a massive financial success out of a movie that was destined to be fodder for every bad movie podcast?
You can read the list, or you can read my version of it below where I leave out the name of the movie and instead tell you whether or not it was made by or has since been acquired by Disney.
1) Disney 2) Disney 3) Half Disney 4) Disney 5) Disney
6) Not Disney 7) Disney 8) Disney 9) Not Disney 10) Disney
11) Disney 12) Disney 13) Not Disney 14) Disney 15) Not Disney
16) Disney 17) Disney 18) Disney 19) Not Disney 20) Disney
21) Not Disney 22) Disney 23) Not Disney 24) Disney 25) Disney
26) Not Disney 27) Not Disney 28) Not Disney 29) Not Disney 30) Not Disney
31) Disney 32) Not Disney 33) Disney 34) Disney 35) Disney
36) Disney 37) Disney 38) Not Disney 39) Not Disney 40) Disney
41) Disney 42) Disney 43) Disney 44) Not Disney 45) Not Disney
46) Disney
28 and a half (20th Century Fox, now owned by Disney, co-produced Titanic) of the 46 movies -- 62%-- that have grossed over $1 billion fall under the banner of a single company. Seven of those movies were released in 2019 alone. That's a big, sudden jump from the three Disney movies to gross $1 billion in 2018. 2020 will be a lighter year for Disney as they only have two Pixar and two Marvel movies coming out. It will also be a live-action remake of Mulan, Jungle Cruise starring Dwayne Johnson (a film adaptation of a Disneyland ride), and Artemis Fowl (an adaptation of a beloved children's book series).
Not all of them will make $1 billion, but they don't all have to. Disney has acquired so many lucrative properties that they're totally fine releasing half-a-dozen tentpole movies a year without batting an eye, with the confidence that at least one or two will make an ungodly amount of money while the others simply make too much money (while getting labeled failures by movie bloggers). If you need a visual representation, Disney has thoughtfully already provided one:
Luis can be found on Twitter and Facebook. Check out his regular contributions to Macaulay Culkin's BunnyEars.com and his "Meditation Minute" segments on the Bunny Ears podcast. And now you can listen to the first episode on Youtube!
