2018 was the biggest year ever for the American film market. Domestic grosses totaled $11.9 billion, 7.8% higher than 2016’s previously-record sum. Last year also marked attendance levels ten percent higher than in 2017, when dismal returns sank Hollywood into a state of uncertainty, after numerous franchises underperformed, and original titles failed to break out. The improvement is thus cause for celebration, but figures should be examined closely. By the end of December, over 30% of total grosses had been earned by 2018’s top ten films, one of the highest proportions ever—Incredibles 2, Black Panther and Avengers: Infinity War all grossed over $600 million domestically. This disproportionate take by the industry’s biggest hits reflects a trend over the last three years, when the top ten have accounted for at least one-third of grosses in the U.S. and Canada. Franchises are also more powerful than they’ve ever been, shrinking non-franchise 2017 box office to its lowest level in history. Such developments signal that Hollywood will increasingly see its fortunes concentrated in the success of a small number of films, as smaller-scale content is lost to other platforms and major studios devote resources to their most valuable intellectual property.
One must look only to Disney to understand this shift. The media conglomerate’s film production arm has dominated theaters in 2018, with a staggering market share of around 30%, and a gross total that sits $1.3 billion ahead of runner-up studio Universal. This success has depended on a precious stable of brands, as Disney’s 2018 slate comprises just three non-sequels. Pixar’s Incredibles 2 was eagerly anticipated by American audiences, leading to the biggest opening for an animated film. Avengers: Infinity War also broke records, beating Star Wars: The Force Awakens for the highest grossing opening weekend in recorded history, and in August, Black Panther became only the third film to top $700 million in domestic ticket sales. The latter two films were produced by Marvel, which, along with Pixar and Lucasfilm, has routinely provided Disney with stratospheric box office performances.
The value of the Mouse House’s marquee titles cannot be overstated. Characters like Mr. Incredible, Luke Skywalker and Iron Man have broad, multigenerational appeal, because of distinct identities and arguably relatable problems. They are also commodifiable, possessing abilities and experiences that translate to merchandise, promotional tie-ins and theme park attractions. Today, the scale on which Disney maximizes cinematic potential in its U.S. theme parks continues to grow. The debut of Incredibles 2 coincided with the opening of Pixar Pier at Disneyland Resort in California, where the existing roller coaster California Screamin’ was outfitted with animatronic Jack Jack's and Dash's, and rechristened as the Incredicoaster. Multi-billion dollar expansions will see Star Wars Land open at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World next summer, in time for the release of the final film in the current trilogy. Crowds are expected to be so big at Disneyland—whose version of the land will open first—that the resort is adding a 6,500-space parking structure and making significant alterations to Disneyland park’s main pedestrian arteries.
Running alongside its efforts at synergy and world-building is the company’s consolidation of studio activity. In 2018, Disney is distributing only ten films, compared to 23 for Warner Brothers and 20 for Universal (Universal’s count does not include re-releases or ventures from Focus Features, which are also scheduled). With such a narrow field over which to spread production expenses, Disney is able to invest heavily in the pictures they make. The resulting products are epic events, filled with state-of-the-art effects, returning characters and enduring appeal, such that the $300 million budget for Infinity War reported by The Wall Street Journal ultimately pales in comparison with the film’s $2 billion worldwide gross. Familiarity has been crucial to these films’ success, as audiences resonate with progressing storylines and high emotional stakes, which are strengthened by related merchandise and themed experiences.
An unfortunate result of brand focus is Disney’s minimized output of standalone films. This year, the company’s only non-franchise releases are A Wrinkle in Time and The Nutcracker and the Four Realms. The former underperformed both at-home and abroad, and lost Disney between $86 and $186 million, according to Yahoo! Finance. The latter has earned only $37 million in 12 days of domestic release, against an estimated $120 million budget. What is notable about both A Wrinkle In Time and The Nutcracker is their lavish production and marketing costs, which typically reflect a certain level of confidence from studios. While Disney is no stranger to pricey bombs (read The Lone Ranger and John Carter), the magnitude of these recent failures raises the possibility that the company will eventually phase out production of original films altogether. Indeed, Disney’s 2019 release calendar currently includes just two films that are franchise-less, instead filled out by Frozen 2, live-action adaptations of Aladdin and The Lion King, and the Star Wars and Avengers finales. Disney has also essentially discontinued its Touchstone Pictures line, which handled more mature fare than the movies explicitly bearing the company’s name, by letting a long-term distribution deal with Dreamworks productions expire in 2016. The deal was picked up by Universal.
The position Disney occupies as Hollywood’s dominant force has convinced the rest of the industry that studios should be cultivating and developing intellectual property as the centerpieces of their respective content libraries, and moving away from other creative pursuits. “Today, the major franchises are commercially invulnerable because they offer up proprietary universes that their legions of fans are desperate to reënter on almost any terms,” writes Stephen Metcalf, in a May issue of The New Yorker. “These reliable sources of profit are now Hollywood’s financial bedrock.” The collateral damage in such an environment is original, star-powered and story-driven cinema, until recently a significant alternative to traditional blockbusters.
One year that seems particularly distant from 2018 is 2002, when there existed box office balance between familiar characters and new ones. On the one hand, Spider-Man ushered in an era of superhero prominence, as Sony used the film’s titular web-slinger for tie-ins with large corporations and merchandising firms, in the same way that Disney does today. On the other hand, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a romantic comedy about acceptance and Greek culture, charmed its way to $241 million on a $5 million budget, or $378 million when adjusted for inflation. That year, the top ten films accounted for 27% of box office returns.
The drop-off since 2001 in adult-targeted films that are not part of cinematic universes is notable, and “has coincided with the rise of ambitious, big-budget storytelling on television,” Metcalf says. (To be clear, adult-skewing indie films have not been outsizely-impacted by Disney’s trajectory, as their unique qualities still drive theatergoing. The concern here is films made by major studios.) Looking at premium channel spending, HBO produced the most recent season of Game of Thrones for $100 million, or $10 million per episode, and next season’s episodes will cost $15 million apiece. Channels like National Geographic are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on programming that would normally sit outside their content wheelhouses, in attempts to establish varied programming destinations that encourage loyal viewership.
Netflix cannot be ignored, either, as it threatens to overwhelm the television marketplace entirely. The streaming company is bent on generating headlines with obscene content budgets that increase billions of dollars annually; this year, 700 television series and 300 films will be or have been produced, for a total of $13 billion. That figure was revised upward over the summer from an initial projection of $8 billion, already $2 billion more than in 2017. Such gargantuan spending supports Metcalf’s characterization of Netflix as a company taking aim “at the primacy of theatrical release, in an apparent effort to make online streaming the prevailing distribution model for movies.” Yet the company’s most popular films don’t share many aesthetic or narrative qualities with Disney hits. Most critics and Netflix subscribers have been drawn to modestly budgeted films, about high school (To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before) or dysfunctional families (The Meyerowitz Stories). Even Stranger Things, one of the company’s most successful endeavors, spends a lot of screen time dissecting themes of childhood and identity, despite a plot that revolves around alien invasions. (The ability to incorporate many narrative elements into Stranger Things is also a sizable benefit of long-form storytelling.)
What Disney—and the rest of the major Hollywood studios—have appeared to grasp is that people will still see movies in theaters, if they’re really worth seeing. Assembling the superheroes, intergalactic revolutionaries, fairytale heroes and animated adventurers who have been loved on screen for decades is still a recipe for reliability. In fact, it is a recipe for growth. The entries into these franchises are consistently outgrossing their predecessors (without accounting for inflation, of course), only at the cost of the other players in the field. At this point, the studios have deduced that there is a level of immersion that Netflix will never be able to provide, or convince its customers it can provide. The studios are probably right. As franchise films acquire bigger budgets and higher stakes, they advance further toward “experience” status. Movies and TV at home are just movies and TV. This divide has admittedly been present since the birth of the blockbuster, but now it’s starker, as the longevity of a medium is repeatedly questioned by its defenders.
The only trouble with analyzing trends in the film industry is that as soon they’re analyzed, more have come to take their places. As I write this, I am assuming that activity by competing enterprises will continue to mirror its current appearance, which is not true. In fact, my observations are entirely undermined by the announcement of Disney+, a streaming service set to rival Netflix and launch late this year, equipped with all of Disney’s aforementioned brands, plus the assets it will soon acquire from the 20th Century Fox merger. While Disney is expected to gradually add content to the service, Derek Thompson of The Atlantic writes that “to save the kingdom,” Disney might have “to blow up the castle.” If Disney does ultimately decide to open its juggernauts in streaming-only capacities, then a battle will no longer exist between the cinemas and all that has come to destroy them. Their biggest modern proponent will hit “self-destruct,” and give birth to a new struggle, waged between identical services, where blockbusters unfold exclusively on phones and tablets, and people stop remembering why they cared about big screens in the first place.
Fergus Campbell is a freshman in Columbia College.