Universal Pictures surpasses Disney as the highest-grossing production house with 24 films in 2023. Movies like Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’, ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ and Gerard Johnstone’s ‘M3GAN’ contributed to this big win for the film studio.
Most successful studio of 2023
While Disney earned $4.827 billion globally with movies like ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’, ‘The Little Mermaid’, ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ and ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’, Universal Pictures collected $4.907 billion worldwide. The $80 million difference in the collection of both production houses made Universal surpass Disney in terms of revenue for the first time since 2015.
In 2023, Disney failed to be on the list of top 3 revenue-generating movies. Warner Bros.’ ‘Barbie’ topped the list as the movie earned $1.4 billion globally. The second spot in the list was Universal Pictures's ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ with a collection of $1.36 billion and the third was ‘Oppenheimer’ with approximately $950 million.
Warner Bros. became the third most lucrative production house of 2023. Movies including ‘Barbie’, ‘The Nun II’ and ‘Wonka’ helped the studio achieve this success.
What led Universal to surpass Disney?
While Universal Pictures released 24 films, Disney released 19 films including ‘Haunted Mansion’ and ‘The Marvels’ last year. The Disney films are highly expensive; to earn profit the film should collect a huge amount.
In 2023, movies from Disney failed to meet the high expectations that the audience holds for Disney movies. Apart from this, two of the blockbusters of the year ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ were from Universal Pictures.
‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’
The big hits of the year, Oppenheimer and Barbie forced the movie maniacs to watch back-to-back shows as both the films were released on the same day. Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ was based on the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, an American theoretical physicist popularly known as "the father of the atomic bomb". The movie grossed over $950 million.
Within a week after the release, ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ became the highest-grossing movie which is based on a video game. It surpassed Minions and became the most lucrative movie released by Illumination. The film was distributed by Universal and was produced by Universal Pictures along with Illumination and Nintendo. The movie earned $1.36 billion worldwide. Both films contributed to the profit made by Universal.