As expected, Disney’s long-anticipated animated sequel Frozen II was an immediate hit at the box office in its opening weekend. The film from directors Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck continued to rack up numbers in its sophomore frame, where it set a Thanksgiving weekend box office record. Well, records beget records and after setting a new holiday weekend mark, Frozen II just helped push Disney to another major ticket sales record.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Frozen II’s stellar box office has launched Disney past $3.2 billion in domestic ticket sales on the year. That huge figure is a new industry record, eclipsing the $3.09 record from 2018 that was also put up by the Disney juggernaut’s slate of films. Having long since lapped the field, Disney is basically just trying to beat its own time at this point.
What’s particularly notable is that the Mouse House’s $3.2 billion in 2019 does not take into account the box office receipts from the movies that Disney inherited from 20th Century Fox when it purchased that studio earlier this year. So the ticket sales from movies like Ad Astra and Ford v Ferrari are just icing on that record-breaking cake.
Thanks to the success of Frozen II pushing Disney to $3.2 billion in ticket sales, Disney now holds a dominant domestic marketshare of over 31% through Sunday according to Comscore estimates. Behind Disney is Warner Bros. with 15% and $1.5 billion on the year, Universal with 14.1% and $1.4 billion on the year and Sony with 10.7% and $1 billion on the year. Coming in fourth and fifth place domestically are Lionsgate, which holds a 6.6% marketshare and made $678.1 million in ticket sales in 2019 and Paramount, with 5.4% marketshare and $557.6 million so far this year.
As of now, it’s Disney and everyone else, and this ticket sales record is just the latest in the studio’s record-breaking year. Back in July, Disney set a record for worldwide ticket sales with $7.6 billion thanks in part to a record $5 billion at the international box office. Again, records beget records and Disney is coming for all of them in 2019.
Frozen II will continue to add to Disney’s 2019 totals. Following its $130.1 million domestic opening weekend and $123.7 million, five-day Thanksgiving frame, the animated sequel sits at $287.6 million domestically through this past Sunday. With $738.6 million worldwide, Frozen II is racing towards $1 billion and would be the sixth Disney film to do so this year, following Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, Aladdin, Toy Story 4 and The Lion King.
And remember, all of these records and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is still to come… and that will probably do pretty well.