Universal Pictures was the highest-grossing studio at the box office in 2023, thanks to Mario, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and M3GAN.
The firm made $4.907 billion in ticket sales worldwide with its slate of 24 films, which includes “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” “Oppenheimer,” and “M3GAN.” The fact that Universal won means that Disney has not led the global box office for the first time since 2015.
With 17 new films, including “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” and “The Little Mermaid,” grossing $4.827 billion worldwide, Disney fell to second position in terms of market share. The studio partially explained the $80 million discrepancy in a message to press by pointing out that Disney released seven fewer films in 2023 than Universal. It also emphasised that, with four of the highest-grossing worldwide releases and three of the biggest domestic releases, Disney has the most titles of any studio in the top 10.
However, Disney did not have a film in the top three for the first time in a long time; instead, Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” ($1.4 billion) and Universal’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($1.3 billion) and “Oppenheimer” ($950 million) hold those positions. Aside from the pandemic-affected 2020 and 2021, this is also the first time since 2014 that no Disney film has broken the $1 billion mark.
The majority of Disney’s 2023 tentpoles fell short of expectations, despite the fact that the studio is still a box office superpower. The only really notable win was “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” ($845 million). The studio lost the box office lead to Universal as a result of a series of poorly received sequels and remakes, including “The Marvels,” “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” and “Haunted Mansion,” to mention a few.
It should be mentioned that a lot of Disney’s small victories or even complete failures would be considered enormous accomplishments by its competitors. The issue is that Disney films have extremely high production costs, usually ranging from $200 million to $250 million, which makes them difficult to make a profit on. Thus, even though “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” brought in $476 million to rank as the tenth highest grossing film of the year, the company lost money on the film during its theatrical run.
A few misfires also befell Universal, though not quite as severely. “Book Club: The Next Chapter” fell short of $30 million globally (the first movie made $100 million in 2018), “Renfield,” the vampire comedy, barely made $26 million worldwide, and “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken,” an animated picture, barely made $45 million. “Fast X” made $704 million in revenue, making it the fifth-biggest movie of the year while costing $340 million and barely breaking even.
Disney and Universal were fighting it out for the top spot, but they were punching well above the others. With $3.84 billion worldwide, Warner Bros. came in a far third place, driven by the success of “Barbie,” “The Nun II,” and “Wonka.”
Although Sony and Paramount have not released their 2023 final box office totals, it is estimated that both studios made $2 billion worldwide to complete the top five.
Sony has a slight edge with an expected $2.09 billion worldwide thanks to its 2023 lineup, which includes “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” the Denzel Washington threequel “Equaliser 3,” and Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon.”
The year finished with an estimated $2.03 billion for Paramount, whose big releases included “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” “Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves,” and “PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie.”