Disney’s box office success in recent years suggests the company doesn’t really need to make original movies (not live-action ones, anyway). The Mouse House has expanded its media empire to include everything from the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the Star Wars franchise, Pixar Animation Studios, and even The Muppets over the last ten years or so. With so many popular - and profitable - brands under their control now, original live-action features haven’t exactly been a priority for Disney.
That’s become increasingly true over the last few years, thanks to the box office success they’ve enjoyed by adapting their classic animated films into live-action/CGI movies like The Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast. For their next trick (and a move that will have rippling effects across the industry), Disney will purchase Fox, in a deal that’s expected to be finalized by June. The move will give the company even more IPs to add to their collection, in addition to the sequels, remakes, and adaptations they already have lined up for the next two years alone. It also means the Mouse House has all the less reason to focus on original live-action projects right now.
Obviously, from a creative perspective, it would be nice to see Disney invest more in live-action projects that aren’t remakes or part of some multimedia franchise. However, from a business perspective, it’s hard to argue with the company’s strategy at the moment. This isn’t anything new either; in fact, Disney’s been moving away from original non-animated content for a while.
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Disney’s Last Original Live-Action Movie Was In 2015
The closest thing Disney’s released to an original live-action film in the last four years was Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland - and even that movie, as its title implies, was partly inspired by the Disney theme park section. Save for their Disneynature documentaries and Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies (which Touchstone Pictures distributed domestically), every other Disney film made since 2015 has been a remake, sequel, prequel, spinoff, or an adaptation on the live-action side. The situation is different when it comes to the company’s animated offerings, but there’s a valid argument to be made that Disney and Pixar Animation are brands unto themselves. And even then, there’s been a noticeable uptick in franchise movies of late, with releases like Finding Dory, Cars 3, Incredibles 2, and Ralph Breaks the Internet.
Of course, there’s a good reason for that. The first Disney-backed Star Wars movie hit theaters in 2015, followed by a sequel and a pair of prequel/spinoffs over the subsequent three years. Meanwhile, Marvel Studios started releasing three MCU movies a year in 2017 and the Mouse House started churning out even more retellings of its animated properties, ranging from smash-hits like Beauty and the Beast to more modest successes (but successes nonetheless) like Christopher Robin. As a result, the studio’s done better than ever over the last few years, commercially-speaking… which brings us to our next point.
Disney Makes More Money Now Than Ever Before
This might feel like a no-brainer to anyone who’s paid attention to Disney’s box office returns of late, but the actual numbers back the idea up. The studio set an all-time domestic box office record in 2018 ($3.092 billion) and took in $7.3 billion worldwide, which wasn’t all that far off from the global box office record that Disney set in 2016 (where it took in $7.6 billion around the world). Before then, however, the Mouse House set an industry record by becoming the first studio to gross over $5 billion at the worldwide box office for three years in a row, from 2015 to 2017. The company’s since extended that record to four years straight and is all but guaranteed to cross that benchmark once again in 2019, extending its winning streak to five years running.
That being said, Disney will have to mix things up a little when it comes to their future output. They learned the hard way that releasing a movie with “Star Wars” in the title doesn’t guarantee it’ll be a smash hit with last year’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, and Lucasfilm has since begun to re-evaluate its approach to building out the galaxy far, far away. Similarly, as successful as Disney’s live-action remakes of its animated movies have been and will no doubt continue to be, they can only continue to reboot their own animated features for so long before diminishing returns start to set in. Thing is, they don’t necessarily have to turn to making original content after that, as we’ve already seen with certain in-studio projects they have scheduled for 2019-2020 (namely, Artemis Fowl and Jungle Cruise).
NEXT PAGE: Will Disney’s strategy Impact Fox’s Future?
Disney Doesn’t Need Original Movies
Truth be told, originality’s never been a big thing with Disney. The studio made a cottage industry out of adapting centuries-old fairy tales (especially stories about princesses) into animated films in the 20th century and has continued to do so in since the new millennium began, with films like Tangled and Frozen. Disney and Pixar Animation have made original fairy tale princess movies over the same time (The Princess and the Frog, Brave, Moana) but, as mentioned, they’re brands that offer an assurance of quality and make it easier for the studios to adapt obscure source material or, every few years, make a project based on a completely new idea. Something similar could be said for recent live-action Disney adaptations like John Carter, The Lone Ranger, and A Wrinkle in Time; they may have under-performed, but a big part of the reason they got a green-light to begin with is because they had the power of the Mouse behind them.
That, in a nutshell, is why Disney doesn’t really have to invest in original movies. All they need to do is put their stamp on a property and, just like that, it has the potential to become a box office success. This further allows the company to shrug off box office misfires like The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, Tomorrowland, John Carter, and so forth; with so many other surefire hits under their belt that deliver, it becomes easier for the Mouse House to take a risk on something every now and then, and not have to worry when it doesn’t pan out. Thankfully, that’s not the case with every studio and others have to actually invest in fresh ideas, in addition to revisiting their most trusted IPs and adapting properties for the big screen. For Disney, however, original movies are almost a luxury, rather than something they need to keep business booming.
Will Disney’s Strategy Impact Fox’s Future?
Fox, like any other Hollywood studio, has its share of go-to franchises, ranging from Alien and Planet of the Apes to X-Men and its various spinoffs (Deadpool, The Wolverine). At the same time, they produce far more original content than other studios in the industry, even when the projects are far from surefire bets at the box office (see The Kid Who Would Be King and Bad Times at the El Royale, for two recent examples). That won’t immediately change in the year ahead either, what with films like James Gray’s sci-fi drama Ad Astra and the Kumail Nanjiani/Dave Bautista action-comedy Stuber scheduled to hit theaters in 2019. Originality’s an ever bigger deal at Fox Searchlight, which has won big awards for their films on a near-annual basis for more than a decade now (see: Slumdog Millionaire, Black Swan, Birdman, The Shape of Water, and so on).
This begs the question: will that change after Disney finalizes its purchase of Fox and Fox Searchlight? Well, yes… and no. Fox Searchlight specifically has a good thing going and stands to bring Disney newfound levels of success on the awards circuit by carrying on business as usual, so the Mouse House may take a hands-off approach to that side of the studio. Fox itself is another story; where Fox Searchlight can be more experimental since the majority of their films are lower-budgeted and, thus, present less of a financial risk, its parent’s offerings tend to fall on the costlier side. In some ways, Fox has already started to embrace the Disney model by expanding franchises like Avatar and Kingsman to includes prequels and back-to-back sequels, and developing followups to recent hits like Murder on the Orient Express. They may only continue to move in that direction once their deal with Disney is done and (especially) the latter gets their hands on brands like X-Men, moving forward.
