When Disney acquired 20th Century Fox in 2019 in one of the largest media acquisitions ever, Disney absorbed its film slate — and was immediately forced to wade through an endless string of commercial duds.
Audiences rejected films like the X-Men spinoffs “Dark Phoenix” and “New Mutants,” the Brad Pitt astronaut drama “Ad Astra,” the comedy “Stopper,” the Harrison Ford adventure “The Call of the Wild,” and the Jessica Lucas comedy “Space in Despair,” all of which failed to make a dent at the box office. Worse, they failed to inspire confidence in the film assets that emerged from the $71.3 billion merger.
“The Fox titles that were part of the deal but not made by Disney looked like orphans,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior analyst at ComScore. “With any merger, there are going to be growing pains. This is a slow-moving business.”
So, the encouraging development is that Fox’s former titles are no longer a burden to Disney but a boon. In 2024, three of the studio’s four biggest releases — “Deadpool & Wolverine,” “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” and “Alien: Romulus” — will be produced by the since-renamed 20th Century Studios.
“Deadpool & Wolverine,” the first Marvel movie to incorporate the Fox-controlled Marvel characters, has become the highest-grossing movie in history with $1.14 billion and counting. “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is far from the most successful film in the primate reboot series with $397 million worldwide, but it’s the eighth-biggest film of the year and the highest-grossing May release. Over the weekend, “Alien: Romulus” made $41.5 million in its domestic box office debut and $108 million worldwide so far, marking the second-biggest debut in the long-running sci-fi horror saga. It wasn’t all connected: This April’s supernatural thriller “The First Omen” failed to hit the mark, grossing just $53 million worldwide. But the prequel to “The Omen” had a meager $30 million production budget, so the losses in theaters weren’t catastrophic.
“The difficult transition period has finally passed, and Disney is now successfully integrating the 20th Century Fox assets in a way that is more natural for Walt Disney Studios,” says Jeff Bock, an analyst at Exhibitor Relations. “By that I mean they’ve leveraged the IP and the events—which Disney does very well.”
The commercial wins follow 2022’s “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the long-awaited sequel that proved critics wrong with a $2.3 billion worldwide haul (making it the third-biggest film of all time), and Searchlight’s Oscar-winning “Poor Things,” a Yorgos Lanthimos-Emma Stone collaboration that turned into a rare post-pandemic indie film with $117 million worldwide.
“It’s impossible to put a number on it, but after ‘Avatar,’ ‘Planet of the Apes,’ and now ‘Alien,’ I’d be surprised if they didn’t feel comfortable with the acquisition,” says David A. Gross, who runs the film consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research.
Gross also points out that large-scale purchases at a media empire like Fox can take time to pay off. “To be able to determine the value of the films Disney bought from Fox, we have to look at them over decades, not years,” he says.
But in the near term, 20th Century Fox’s contribution is much needed after Disney’s terrible 2023 at the box office, with flops including “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” “The Marvels,” “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and the animated “Wish,” to name a few. Disney’s brands — including Pixar and Marvel — are also recovering. Thanks to “Inside Out 2” (the year’s biggest film at $1.58 billion) and a big helping of 20th Century Fox titles, Disney became the first studio in 2024 to surpass $3 billion in global ticket sales. The Magic Kingdom will continue to boost its theatrical earnings with Disney’s animated “Moana 2” (Nov. 27) and “Mufasa: The Lion King” (Dec. 20) through the end of the year.
“All of these movies have gotten good reviews,” Dergarabedian says of Disney’s 2024 slate. “They’ve made solid movies and they’ve done great. It’s weird to say that because Disney is such a solid company, but this is a big comeback for them.”
Also in 2024, Disney will release two Searchlight films: “Nightbitch,” a surreal comedy starring Amy Adams and directed by Marielle Heller (Dec. 6) and “A Complete Unknown,” a biographical drama with Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan (Dec. 25). Then things fizzle out. The only 20th Century Fox films scheduled for release are Marvel’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” starring Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach (July 25, 2025) and “Avatar: Fire and Water” (Dec. 19, 2025) — and any other “Avatar” sequels James Cameron revives. Aside from those titles that have firm release dates, it’s unclear how Disney will manage to achieve its goals. Plans to continue leveraging the 20th Century brand.
Moreover, most of these recent successes have been part of established properties that span decades. Aside from the trusted properties, Disney has either trimmed Fox’s previous slate or moved much of it to debut on Hulu. There’s been far less to celebrate with original fare that isn’t part of an existing franchise. David O. Russell’s star-studded 2022 film “Amsterdam” and Kenneth Branagh’s 2023 film “A Haunting in Venice” were painful flops. Will Disney put its energy into producing the kind of off-brand IP that has delivered unconventional box office triumphs like the Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the racing drama “Ford v Ferrari” and the Hugh Jackman-starring musical “The Greatest Showman” … or will it be all “Alien,” “Avatar” and “Apes” all the time?
“They have a good understanding of the franchises they inherited,” Gross says. “It’s hard to predict original movies.”
