I feel like I haven’t talked about Disney too much recently, which may be because Block has taken most of my ire recently, but more likely, because Disney is less of my portfolio and is doing a bit better. Even with the recent slump in price, Disney is still doing pretty well this year. And what I have talked about even less this year is Disney’s movie schedule.

     Disney’s only major movie so far this year was Kingdom of the Planet of the Ape. And while it was incredibly poorly named, it was still a modest commercial success, bringing in $400 million on a $160 million budget, and that was during a poor box office year. But Disney’s box office muscle is weighted towards the latter part of the year, so let’s review Disney’s remaining movies, and how I think they are going to do.

     First, Inside Out 2 has been a massssive success so far. Tracking for the opening weekend was about $90 million, but the movie came in at $155 domestically, which is spectacular.  And while the budget was $175, a $155 domestic opening weekend is crazy good. This is a 72% higher opening than the original, the second biggest Pixar opening of all time, the largest international opening of all time for Pixar, the fifth biggest opening weekend since 2020, and is now predicted to cross the $1 billion mark globally by the end of its run. This is absolutely great. From a money point of view, this is awesome because it really warms up the market for some of the Disney movies later this year and because it is going to bring in a ton of money to Disney. From an emotional point of view, this is great because Pixar needed a win, badly. Their past movies have struggled, and this movie has a chance to be top five this year for total box office, win an award or two, and then port over to Disney+, where more people will watch it. Really hard to overstate how big of a deal this move is.

     Kinds of Kindness is an Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos movie. The last time they worked together, they made Poor Things, a movie that did incredibly well and won several Oscars, including Stone’s second for best actress. The movie is not a blockbuster, but it will make money. Lanthimos has an impeccable reputation+he made this movie for $15 million, and it’s three hours long. This is an art movie, but I am going to guess it brings in $90 million.

     Deadpool & Wolverine is not an art movie, and it is going to make a ludicrous amount of money. I think it is going to pull in about as much as the first two did. It being the third movie, and superhero movies being less popular than ever are two factors that weigh it down, but the lack of competition, and the RR/HJ combo push it back up. I’m going with $800 million.

     A Real Pain is a movie that was sold to Searchlight (Disney) for $10 million. It has Kieran Culkin of Succession fame and Jesse Eisenberg of Zombieland and The Social Network. I think people hate on Jesse too much. He has zero range at all, but when he is operating within his range, he does a pretty good job. From what I have seen, he is not branching out in this movie, and Culkin is on a heater right now. I am going to go with $100 million. This may seem steep to people, but I think Culkin has enough heat right now, and I think the movie is really, super good. Reviews are all excellent, and I think it’s going to go on a run, so $100 million and an award or two.

     Moana 2 is going to be gigantic. People do not understand how massively popular Moana still is, for some reason. I always just thought it was a relatively fun movie, but even eight years later, it is still massive. This is too easy to predict. I am going $1.2 billion, and this is the one I feel most sure about.

     Mufasa: The Lion King is a movie that others feel more optimistic about than I do. I get a lot of hate about this, but I actually do not think either Lion King was that good. I would rank Cars, for example, miles above both. I have seen some predictions of between 800-900 million dollars for the movie, but I am going to go with $600. I just do not think people care that much about a prequel Lion King movie.

      Whether my predictions are accurate or not, I do think Disney is unfreezing their movie-making abilities. I think Disney is learning how to successfully make and market movies again, get a handle on their IP, and drink dollars. There seems to be this fear that Disney is running out of IP, that people are getting tired of Disney IP, and that is not true. Disney just forgot how to use their IP correctly, but that is no longer the case…I hope.