It’s no secret that the film industry, on the whole, is hurting. Americans just aren’t going to the movies anymore — or, rather, they aren’t coming in the numbers that studio executives have been banking on in order to recoup the costs of making mega-blockbusters that nobody apparently wants to see.
Justice League is expected to lose Warner Bros an astounding $100-150 million dollars. The Mummy‘s abject failure to launch may very well have killed the so-called Dark Universe it was supposed to debut. The Dark Tower, which in one movie burned through seven books worth of material in one movie, tanked its intended multi-media franchise right out of the gates. And don’t even get me started on The Emoji Movie.
When the dust of the year has finally settled, Hollywood is expected to have grossed $10.35 billion dollars. And while that’s certainly a lot of money, it isn’t nearly enough. It’s a full billion dollars less than the year before. Entire franchises have been claimed in the turmoil that this difference has caused. Fox went so far as to sell out completely to rival studio Disney. And, as it turns out, only Disney has proven to be able to survive this new environment.
With only a week left to go in the year, The Last Jedi‘s half a billion dollar global debut has allowed the infamous House of Mouse to cross the $6 billion dollar mark. This means that most of the money earned by film industry as a whole in the last year has been earned by a single multimedia conglomerate.
It’s really no wonder, either. While Disney does allow the talented men and women it hires on to make the kinds of movies that they are passionate about, it does so only within certain profit-maximizing constraints. It dabbles in known franchises and popular characters. It works the bottom line like a maestro conducting a symphony; no dollar is wasted unless it cannot be helped.
Just look at Disney (and its subsidiaries) output over the last year. Marvel Studios gave us Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming and Thor: Ragnarok. Pixar made Cars 3 and Coco. LucasFilm produced The Last Jedi. Disney proper released Beauty and the Beast and Dead Men Tell No Tails (which at least did well in important international markets like China). Collectively, each has averaged $750 million at the box office (with some still in theaters and others earning considerably more than others).
Every indication suggests that these already monopolistic numbers are only going to increase as time goes on. Disney’s acquisition of Fox Studios now gives them a worrisome 27% percent of the total film industry and access to such mega-franchises as Alien, Avatar and Predator. Anastasia is now a likely candidate for the live-action treatment. With the inclusion of the X-Men and Fantastic Four, the MCU finally has all of its franchises under one roof. That’s not even counting what they’re going to do with Indiana Jones when they finally get around to that character.
Disney has more than earned its success in 2017. That it finally has back its prodigal Marvel properties is fantastic news for them and fans alike. That they are commanding this much of a lead over their nearest competitors, however, is cause for considerable alarm.
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