A Big Year For Disney

In a news article posted by CNN, they announce that Disney debuted the trailer for their new movie “Mary Poppins Returns.” The movie will feature some big names including Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Colin Firth, Meryl Streep, and Dick Van Dyke. The trailer provided a sneak peak of the film by showing Mary Poppins going back to look after the Banks children who are now young adults. The movie will be released on December 19, so “Prepare for another jolly holiday with Mary,” CNN announced. The article also stated that Disney has already surpassed its grosses from all of last year, and they still have more movies to come. That makes this year Disney’s second most profitable year in history, and the year isn’t over. This made me curious as to what made Disney so profitable this year and what do they make their profits on, so I decided to look into this further.

An article titled, “Disney’s 2018 Global Box Office Becomes 2nd Biggest In Studio’s  History, Tops 2017,” posted by Deadline, gives more details about what is making this year so profitable for Disney. According to Deadline, Disney has already grossed approximately $6,468.1M. The breakdown of their profits is also listed in the article with Avengers: Infinity War making $2,046.5 million, Black Panther making $1,346.9 million, Incredibles 2 making $1,183.4 million, Ant-Man and The Wasp making $617 million, Solo: A Star Wars Story making $393 million, Star Wars: The Last Jedi making $292.9 million in the 2018 portion, Coco making $266.9 million in the 2018 portion, Christopher Robin making $153.7 million, A Wrinkle in Time making 132.7 million, and some other profit of $35.2 million.

This isn’t all that Disney has for this year with more coming out in the next few months. At the time that this article was released, the final two releases in Italy and Germany for Incredibles 2 hadn’t happened yet. In December and November, Disney has more movies being released. “In November, The Nutcracker And The Four Realms waltzes in followed by Ralph Breaks The Internet, the sequel to 2012’s $471M worldwide grosser. After that, Mary Poppins Returns descends in the Christmas corridor,” stated Deadline.

Disney’s profits don’t only come from movies, although that makes up a large percentage of their overall gross profits. An article posted by Bezinga titled, “Where Does Disney Make Its Profits,” shared the four categories of Disney’s profits. The first is broadcasting and cable networks. Along with their movies, they also make money off of their broadcast and cable tv networks like ESPN and ABC. Parks and Resorts is the second category. This includes the Disneyland Resort and the Walt Disney World Resort. The final two categories are Walt Disney Studios, so all of the movies, and their consumer products.

There are many more factors than just the movies that make Disney so profitable. With the remaining films coming out before 2019, Disney hopes to continue to increase its profits. The leading year was 2016, where Disney grossed $8.3  billion dollars. As stated by Deadline, “Catching 2016 may not be on the cards, but there’s more to come from Disney this year.”