Yahoo Finance Disney (DIS) Cedes the 2023 Global Box Office to Universal
Disney DIS has been dethroned as the global box office king for the first time since 2015. The rival studio, Universal Pictures, owned by Comcast CMCSA, claimed the crown with $4.91 billion in ticket sales compared with Disney’s $4.83 billion. Warner Bros. Discovery WBD landed in a distant third place at the global box office with a collection of $3.84 billion globally, led by Barbie, The Nun II and Wonka.
This marks a milestone, breaking an eight-year streak of Disney’s dominance in the filmmaking realm. Universal’s diverse portfolio of 24 releases proved to be a winning strategy, outpacing DIS’ 14 films for the year. The absence of a robust Marvel slate and the lack of a Star Wars entry contributed to this deviation from the norm.
Disney had a string of costly box office bombs in 2023, including Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ($383 million), Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ($476 million), Wish ($176 million) and The Marvels ($205 million). Its highest-grossing movie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, was fourth on the overall charts, chalking up $845 million at the box office.
The live-action remake of The Little Mermaid came in seventh at a respectable $569 million but fell short compared with Disney's previous remakes like The Lion King ($1.6 billion), Beauty and the Beast ($1.3 billion) and Aladdin ($1.05 billion).
In addition to the box office challenges, Disney also faced corporate issues, including a showdown between its CEO Bob Iger and activist shareholder Nelson Peltz, as well as a corporate restructuring that involved cutting 7,000 jobs.
The Walt Disney Company Price and Consensus
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WBD, Universal Outshine Disney With Blockbuster Hits in 2023
At the 2023 box office, Disney was shut out of the top three spots, which belonged to WBD’s Barbie movie ($1.4 billion) and Universal's Oppenheimer ($950 million) and Super Mario Bros. Movie ($1.3 billion).
Universal also had the fifth-biggest movie of the year, Fast X ($704 million), and two of the biggest horror movies of the year, Five Nights at Freddy’s ($295 million) and M3GAN ($181 million). Other projects like the vampire comedy Renfield struggled with a global total of $26 million, Book Club: The Next Chapter fell short of $30 million worldwide (compared with its predecessor's $100 million in 2018) and the animated Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken just scraped past $45 million.
Sony SONY and Paramount haven’t reported final grosses for 2023, but each studio reportedly brought in $2 billion globally to round out the top five.
With Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Equalizer 3 and Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, among its 2023 lineup, Sony has a slight edge with an estimated $2.09 billion worldwide. The major releases of Paramount were Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie, which ended the year with an estimated $2.03 billion globally.
Shares of Disney have risen 0.2% in the past six months compared with the Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector’s growth of 4.3% due to the poor performance of the Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company’s recent movies at the box office. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
DIS also outperformed Warner Bros Discovery but underperformed Sony and Comcast over the past six months. Shares of SONY and CMCSA have returned 4.6% and 1.9%, respectively, while shares of WBD have lost 10.4% during the same time frame.
Upcoming Lineup Creates Bright Prospects for Disney in 2024
After a rough 2023, Disney looks to recover in 2024 with some highly-anticipated theatrical outings, bringing multiple franchises and original stories into play for the studio. This is expected to boost top-line growth in the near term.
The stories include The First Omen (Apr 5), Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (May 24), an untitled Deadpool movie (Jul 26), The Amateur (Nov 8) and Mufasa: The Lion King (Dec 20), among others.
The Indian pipeline of content includes titles like Periloor Premier League, The Legend Of Hanuman Season 3 and Karmaa Calling. These notable releases are expected to aid the company’s subscriber growth in the upcoming quarters.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for DIS’ fiscal 2024 revenues is pegged at $91.99 billion, indicating year-over-year growth of 3.48%. The consensus estimate for earnings is pegged at $4.38 per share, indicating year-over-year growth of 16.49%.
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