Walt Disney wins 2022, at least in terms of box office grosses. It should come as no surprise that Disney had yet another strong year and finished No. 1 among studios at the box office both domestically and globally.
Disney ended the year with a grand total of $4.9 billion grossed worldwide and $2 billion domestic across the 16 theatrical releases of last year. This continues the lengthy streak that Disney has been on from 2016-2022 atop the year-end global box office.
Even if Top Gun: Maverick was the movie success story of 2022, topping both the single-movie domestic and worldwide box office charts, Disney still owned 40% of the top ten highest-grossing films in terms of domestic and global grosses due to its number of franchise releases including Avatar: The Way of Water (which has already grossed over $1.4 billion since coming out last month), Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness ($955 million worldwide/$411 million domestic), Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ($820 million worldwide/$439 million domestic) and Thor: Love and Thunder ($760 million worldwide, $343 million domestic).
To add to this accomplishment, only three of Disney’s films were released in China. Those were The Way of Water, Death on the Nile and Encanto (which was released in November 2021 stateside).
None of this comes as much of a surprise for Disney, as James Cameron’s long-awaited sequel to Avatar, The Way of Water, was always going to be a dominant force at the box office. In just two and a half weeks, The Way of Water grossed over $400 million at the domestic box office. That total haul only continues to grow past the holidays as it encounters no competition at the box office
Can Disney continue its streak atop the box office in 2023? The studio sure has a shot and will be aided by their dozen theatrical releases planned as of the time of this writing. Some of those include franchise fare such as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in February, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in May, the fifth Indiana Jones installment at the tail-end of June, and The Marvels in July. The studio will also offer original content such as Pixar’s latest film, Elemental, in June and another animated film, Wish, in November.
From the looks of it, 2023 will be another year dominated by the House of Mouse. Check out our interview with Cameron below:
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