Several studio insiders and corporate communications professionals have expressed their dissatisfaction with this situation.
We are, of course. Why shouldn't we do it? Even if the pandemic kept business at bay with $4.55 billion for 2021 in the United States and Canada, below the expected $5.2 billion, we still need to know where the studios stand when all the dust settles — even if the pandemic kept business at bay with $4.55 billion for 2021 in the United States and Canada, below the expected $5.2 billion.
The way the Disney-Fox merger continues to tip the scales in both a global and domestic box office race continues to upset many major studio theater executives in this annual exercise. Furthermore, different studios calculate their year-end grosses in different ways. Domestic box office was broken out by label in the early 2000s, which meant that if you had a separate marketing and distribution team that oversaw theatrical releases, you had a separate box office. For example, when Miramax was owned by Disney, Sony Classics, Warner Bros. Independent, and even Focus Features used to break out their grosses in Comscore.
Disney clearly is counting all of its labels — Disney, 20th Century Studios and Searchlight, and proclaiming itself the winner with $1.17 billion in the U.S./Canada (+180% over 2020) and $2.9 billion global. Stateside that translates into 27% of the $4.55 billion 2021 domestic B.O. year, and the town will just have to deal with that.
Disney’s 20th Century titles — Free Guy, The King’s Man, West Side Story — are handled by the same marketing and distribution team as the big Disney titles, i.e. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Searchlight, though, has its own distribution and marketing ops. Expect Disney’s haul to be even bigger this year with Avatar 2 and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever capping off 2022.
If we're being strict and weighing domestic box office marketshare by individual studios, as we were before the 2019 merger, and going by how they're listed in Comscore, Sony can argue that they won 2021 with $1.059 billion domestic. Comscore reports this in their annual marketshare rankings, and Sony's figure excludes Sony Classics. Spider-Man: No Way Home accounted for 54 percent of Sony's annual box office, with Venom: Let There Be Carnage ($212.6M) and Ghostbusters: Afterlife ($122.3M) also contributing. Sony's funds account for 23% of the domestic B.O. in 2021. Shang-Chi, Black Widow, Eternals, and Jungle Cruise helped Disney earn $921.2 million.
