Apple Prepares to Take On Disney Head-to-Head at the Box Office

Disney faces a threat unlike anything it has seen in decades. Although major outlets are confirming my report from two weeks ago about Apple’s box office entry, they’re missing the bigger story.

On March 8th of this year, a major exclusive was brought to the attention of the media when I announced via a source that Apple was planning to enter into the box office game by directly targeting Disney. The plan is simple: now that Apple has John Lasseter leading SkyDance Animation (Lasseter the former head of Pixar and guru of all things family content at Disney), why not have SkyDance compete with Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios? And though Apple has never been a major player in cinemas in the past, Disney is clearly in the weakest position we’ve seen in decades.

Now, that leak has been confirmed — although the media is missing the bigger story.

According to a number of outlets, Apple is indeed planning to jump into the box office industry, putting Apple TV movies into box office runs before they go into streaming. For 2023, the financial dedication to this opening salvo is impressive. Apple plans to spend about one billion dollars in making sure they get their foot solidly in the door. That’s nowhere close to what Disney and other traditional box office behemoths spend on moviemaking, but it’s not a small amount either. While Disney released sixteen movies in 2022, Apple will only be launching their box office attempts with a handful of films in 2023.

Apple has committed to spending $1 billion a year to become a serious distributor of blockbuster movies in the global theatrical marketplace, Bloomberg reported(opens in new tab), citing unnamed sources.

—  Daniel Frankel, Next TV

And sure, Apple has dabbled at the box office before, but nothing remotely serious. Still, the major trades and media are missing the most important aspect of what is happening here.

Read the Original Bloomberg Report from March 23rd, 2023

Though Apple is getting its feet wet in 2023 with a major box office push, the real news is 2024. That’s when we’re likely to get John Lasseter’s first real film from SkyDance (he was only with the studio for a short time before “Luck” came out), and that film — Spellbound — is coming to theaters as a direct competitor to Disney’s Pixar films. That means not only does Disney now have to contend with a blossoming Nintendo Cinematic Universe, the Minions, a potentially rebirthed Shrek franchise, and more… but now they’re also going against the man who seems to have been largely responsible for their decades-long run of animated successes going all the way back to the mid-nineties.

Maybe getting rid of John Lasseter for hugging too much wasn’t the best of ideas. Apple seems to really like his hugs.

And though it’s a billion this year that Apple is putting into the effort, note that it’s probably more significant that Apple is going to begin building those relationships and connections in the box office industry. The real line in the sand will come when the company commits a huge amount of money just to a single animated film which could launch an entire series of Pixar-shaming Lasseter encores for a decade to come.

If you follow my content on YouTube, would have known two weeks ago this groundbreaking story all over Bloomberg and other publications. Now we have to wonder just how long it will be until they all figure out the real play that Apple is making. For now, they continue reporting on the immediately obvious, not what is clearly coming as a result.

Here’s the video from two weeks ago:

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