Courtesy of Disney Enterprises Inc.
Blue aliens, a family of superheroes, and a city of powered-up talking animals the walt disney company to the top of the domestic box office in 2025.
Full-year ticket sales in the United States and Canada rose about 4% from 2024 to $9.05 billion. Disney accounted for the bulk of that haul with $2.49 billion in ticket sales, or 27.5%, according to Comscore data.
Its closest competitors were Warner Bros. Discoverywhich represented $1.9 billion nationally, or 21%, and Universalwhich raised $1.7 billion, or 19.7%. Together, these three studios accounted for nearly 70% of the domestic box office market share.
No other studio surpassed $1 billion in domestic ticket sales or accounted for more than 7% of the total box office.
“[Warner Bros., Disney and Universal] “They have the advantage of having at least two or more distinct and successful sub-brands, such as Marvel under Disney, New Line under WB and Illumination under Universal, under their corporate umbrella, allowing these studios to dominate at least in terms of overall box office and percentage of the market they control,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of market trends at Comscore.
Disney's breakout performance came on the back of an already popular intellectual property. Four of his films were among the year's top 10 domestic releases, including the live-action remake of “Lilo & Stitch,” a sequel to 2016's “Zootopia,” another entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with “Fantastic Four: First Steps” and a third “Avatar” film.
“Most years at the box office are dominated by well-known intellectual property and unoriginal content; films that have the brand recognition that theoretically gives those films an advantage in terms of marketing and potential box office success,” Dergarabedian said.
In fact, nine of the top 10 films at the domestic box office came from existing intellectual property. Warner Bros.' “Sinners” was the only original title listed.
“There were some big-budget originals in 2025 that did incredibly well… but lest anyone think that trend is going away, 2026 appears to eclipse 2025 in terms of the number of high-profile sequels and well-known IPs on the slate for the year,” Dergarabedian said.
This is especially true of Disney.
The studio will release its first Star Wars movie in theaters since 2019 called “The Mandalorian and Grogu” after the popular characters from its “The Mandalorian” series on Disney+; “Toy Story 5” will hit theaters in June, followed by the live-action “Moana” in July; then the highly anticipated “Avengers: Doomsday” arrives in December.
A new Spider-Man movie will also hit theaters in 2026, but as part of a deal with Sony to make the character part of Disney's MCU, Sony keeps most of the box office profits while Disney gets the merchandise sales.
The box office will also get a boost from Warner Bros.' “Supergirl” and “Dune: Part Three,” Universal's “Minions 3,” “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” and “The Odyssey,” Lionsgate's “The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping” and Sony's third film “Jumanji.”
“As we look ahead to 2026, there is a lot of optimism to go around,” said Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at fandango and founder of Box Office Theory “The list is packed with top-tier franchises, some fan-driven and some family-oriented, along with filmmaker-driven tentpoles… plus an inevitable crop of strong or potentially surprising performers from horror, comedy, indie and other genres.”
Disclosure: Versant is the parent company of CNBC and Fandango.
