Disney 2023 Box Office Performance Graded Worst of All Hollywood Studios

It is impossible to argue that the Walt Disney Company did not have a pretty rough year at the box office. Although the House of Mouse grossed hundreds of millions of dollars in 2023, it fell far short of prior standards and analysts’ expectations, leading many to view it as the year the Marvel Cinematic Universe finally cracked. To add insult to injury, Disney’s 2023 box office performance has also been graded the worst of any Hollywood studio by a major source.

As part of its year-end reporting, Variety released a series of letter grades for each major Hollywood studio, with the Walt Disney Company coming dead last with a C+. In contrast, Paramount Pictures received a B-, Sony Pictures got a B, Apple matched at a B, Warner Bros. Discovery and Lionsgate both performed highly at B+ level, and Universal Pictures was head of the class with an A.

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While these are admittedly somewhat subjective evaluations, the box office numbers are telling. While Disney may have had the overall highest grosses with its slate of Marvel Studios films, Indiana Jones & the Dial of Destiny, the live-action Little Mermaid remake, Pixar’s Elemental, and Wish, it also reported some of the highest budgets to clear for profitability.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny infamously had a production budget of some $300 million and didn’t even gross $390 million, meaning that it is well in the red after promotional costs are factored in. Haunted Mansion did not even recoup its $150 million budget, and while The Little Mermaid managed to gross nearly $600 million, it’s not even in the top five highest-performing Disney live-action remakes. The Marvels not only didn’t perform like a typical MCU movie, it actually did the worst of any single Marvel Studios film, ever.

The latter film is, in many ways, indicative of the problem that Disney faced in 2023 and likely why it is being graded as the worst of the studios. Disney not only has to compete with the likes of Warner Bros. Discovery’s Barbie and Universal’s Oppenheimer, it has to continually match and exceed its own past performances.

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2023 was the first year in nearly a decade in which Disney did not have a movie that grossed a billion dollars, a once unfathomable sum that the company is now expected to routinely exceed. Simply by being unable to maintain the same performance, the Walt Disney Company looks worse and worse.

We will have to wait and see how Disney CEO Bob Iger tries to combat this problem in 2024, except by cutting more and more departments and laying off employees. Maybe next year the company can improve its grades a little.

What do you think of those studio grades? Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments below!