Box Office Analyst Claims The Walt Disney Company Has Lost Over $1 Billion In Just 2023

December 18, 2023 ·

John F. Trent

Box office analyst OMB Reviews claims The Walt Disney Company has lost well over $1 billion from just its theatrical releases in 2023 alone.

In a recent video upload discussing this past weekend’s box office hauls for various films including Wonka, Godzilla Minus One, and The Boy and the Heron, OMB Reviews asserted, “Right now, I’m saying Disney has lost over a billion dollars this year in just their theatrical releases.”

He went on to assert that Disney’s losses are “close to $1.5 billion … just in the last year 2023 and just based off of theatrical with the numbers we currently have available.”

Later in the video, OMB Reviews explained, “I took the bare minimum for budgets as far as what has actually been reported… For instance, I know that Indiana Jones probably costs closer to $400 million. I already know that that is likely going to be the case. I know that The Marvels probably have also cost closer to $300 million. So this is just going based off the reported budgets.”

“Even if you were to take that and you were to take my much more conservative, studios get 60% of the entire box office that means you’re still looking at overall $828 million in financial losses for Disney this year with only one movie for them having made conceivably any profit that being Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” he continued.

OMB Reviews then reiterated the metrics he uses, “This is using those reported budgets. This is also using a 60% cut for the actual studio, and a typical marketing cost of 1.5x the budget.”

THIS WISH – In Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Wish,” Asha is invited to see where King Magnfico keeps all of the wishes given to him by those in his kingdom. Featuring the voices of Academy Award®-winning actress Ariana DeBose as Asha and Chris Pine as King Magnifico, the epic animated musical “Wish” hits the big screen on Nov. 22, 2023. © 2023 Disney. All Rights Reserved.

After adjusting his chart to just have the studio take a 50% cut of the box office haul, he revealed, “If you take that into account…when you look at that, you go all the way up to $1.2 billion in financial losses.”

“So again, if that is going to be the metric that you want to use and the metric that maybe you have an issue with me on, guess what? We’re talking now of losses between $850 million to $1.2 billion,” he shared.

Next, he relayed, “Now, some might still not be happy with this and say, ‘Well, wait a minute we already know that it can’t possibly be this amount because we know that China makes up for a certain amount, we know that international numbers have a much lower cut given to the actual studios.’ So, I decided to create what I’m calling ‘The Insanity Chart.'”

He explained the chart, “So this is using a few different things. So for one, when you look at the actual budgets, I’m still just using those reported budget, or I’m mostly using those reported budgets. I think The Little Mermaid was reportedly $250 or so, but regardless of any of that were still using mostly those same numbers. But here is where the fun begins. So domestic. Some argue that domestic is really about a 55% cut for the studio. Some say somewhere between 50% and 55% when it comes to what it makes domestically. So if it makes $100 million domestically, roughly half or a little more than half goes to the studio, the other half goes to the actual theaters themselves.”

“Internationally usually see about a 40% cut for the studio on average, not including China. So 40% internationally tends to be given to the studios, 60% tends to be given to the actual theaters or to the countries or whatever it might be. … And then we just have a category for China because China, as I said, takes 75% of the box office leaving only 25% for the actual studio,” he elaborated.

“When you take this into account, you go all the way from $1.2 billion in losses to $1.4 billion,” he detailed. “And again, this is using the metric here of 55% domestic cut, 40% international cut, and a 25% China cut.”

OMB Reviews then summarized, “The best argument you can make is that they lost close to a billion dollars when in reality you’re looking at probably somewhere closer to $1.2 to $1.8 billion dollars in financial losses especially as we get closer to what the actual budgets for these movies were and actually even update these further to have any reported marketing budgets on top of that.”

He then noted, “The only profitable movie they actually have is still Guardians and it’s barely profitable.” He detailed the film only brought in around $4 million in profits.

“Basically, the news of Disney for this past year is this: none of their movies made money and the only one that conceivably made any money barely made any and hardly made enough to pay for any other projects going forward,” he concluded.

These results at the box office among others at company has seen a number of investors including Nelson Peltz and Ike Perlmutter launch a proxy battle for two board seats. In a press release Peltz’s Trian Fund Management detailed, “Studio content continues to disappoint consumers, slowing the speed of the flywheel and threatening future earnings growth.”

A previous press release in January also outlined major problems Peltz and Trian found at Disney, “Flawed Direct-to-Consumer (“DTC”) strategy struggling with profitability, despite reaching similar revenues as Netflix and having a significant IP advantage. Lack of overall cost discipline. Overearning in the Parks business to subsidize streaming losses.”

They also noted that with Peltz on the Board he would work to “Improve DTC operating margins. Eliminate redundant and/or excessive costs. Refocus the creative engine to drive profitable growth.”