Disney movies grossed $6.58B in 2025

Global box office revenues hit $33.5B in 2025

The number was a marked improvement from 2024, up 12% from a particularly sluggish year. Disney films—including "Lilo & Stitch" and "Zootopia 2"—were some of the year's biggest earners.

Disney movies pulled in over $5B in 2024

2024 was a banner year for Disney, with the global film studio finding success with "Inside Out 2," "Moana 2," and "Deadpool & Wolverine." While Disney has faced criticism for its reliance on sequels, reboots, and offshoots, the 2024 numbers suggest the public is still eager for its content.

Biggest moments that defined Disney

Walt Disney’s first studio went bankrupt, but he and his brother Roy started over in 1923, eventually building an entertainment empire. From "Snow White" to "The Little Mermaid," Disney shaped animation and expanded into TV, theme parks, and major acquisitions like Pixar and Marvel.

Horror grossed more than $1B at the box office for the first time in 2017

It was the first time the genre broke the barrier for domestic box offices, powered by hits like “Get Out,” “IT” and “Split.” Since then, horror movies have remained commercial juggernauts: In 2025, the genre surpassed the $1B mark by September.

The numbers behind the 'Star Wars' franchise

The "Star Wars" movies include some of the biggest blockbusters in Hollywood history, with the original film, 1977's "A New Hope," earning a 2,400% profit. Only one of the franchise's movies (2018's "Solo") has lost money at the box office.

The 'Wicked' movies turned an already-successful Broadway show into a behemoth

The production was already one of the most successful in Broadway history, but the release of the first movie kicked it into overdrive: It grossed 15% more in 2024, the year "Wicked: Part I" was released, than the previous year, bringing in more than $112M.

Disney’s IP problem, according to industry experts

Disney seems to be an unstoppable force in the entertainment industry, but after an unprecedented high point in 2019, the company began losing money. In this podcast, two industry veterans discuss what they see as Disney's existential problems: an overreliance on preexisting material and an inability to innovate as it once did.

'Harry Potter’ ranks among the highest-grossing film franchises in history

The eight Harry Potter films earned $7.7B worldwide, placing the series alongside Star Wars, Marvel and James Bond as one of the top-grossing movie franchises ever produced. Watch a comparison over time here.

A statistical breakdown of the global film industry

Dive into this collection of stats and infographics explaining the current state of both Hollywood and the global film industry. The page covers a variety of topics, including independent film production, box office revenue, global film markets, movie-going demographics and more. It also addresses the relatively new phenomenon of home video streaming.

‘Fantasia’ initially failed at the box office

After finding success with “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” Disney set out to prove he could make more sophisticated art. He collaborated with conductor Leopold Stokowski on “Fantasia,” an elaborate animated feature set to classical music that flopped to the tune of $15M and nearly bankrupted Disney’s company.

Disney fans categorize the company's films into specific eras

Superfans break the company's animated films into chronological eras: the Golden Age, the Transitional Era, the Disney Renaissance, the Modern Era, and the Revival Era.

Netflix is the dominant streaming service

As of 2025, Netflix had amassed more than 300 million subscribers globally and saw quarterly revenue over $11B.

'The Wizarding World of Harry Potter' sparked record theme park attendance

A Forbes analysis found Universal’s parks in Florida, Japan, and California saw average attendance growth of 32% after opening Wizarding World attractions, with Orlando’s Islands of Adventure—the home of the Wizarding World—rising 64.5% to 9.8 million visitors.

Disney World tickets cost 56% more now than in 2014

The prototypical middle-class American family vacation has been a staple for decades. But in the last 10 years, the cost—over $5K for a 5-night stay for a family of four—has placed the trip out of reach for many.

The film ‘Coco’ sparked global interest in the Day of the Dead

The holiday figures prominently in the 2017 Disney film, which inspired an uptick in Day of the Dead merchandise being carried by national chains like Target and Michaels, sold alongside Halloween merchandise.

The 1948 Supreme Court ruling was overturned in 2020

In 2020, US District Court Judge Analisa Torres overturned the 1948 Supreme Court ruling that broke up the studio system—effectively allowing the film industry to become vertically integrated once again—with companies like Amazon and Disney taking advantage of the relaxed regulations.

Pop culture sometimes changes the way people invest

After the "Barbie" movie premiered, the number of investors in Barbie parent company Mattel's stock grew more than six times larger on the investment platform Public, according to the platform's recent report. Other cultural trends have affected which stocks investors choose as well.

In 1945, Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and legendary animator Walt Disney began collaborating on a short film that was not completed until 2003, years after both men had died.

Vizualize global debt by country

Global debt reached $226T by the end of 2020—the biggest one-year jump since World War II. This graphic compares the debt-to-GDP ratio of various countries.

In 2023, the world consumed over 5 billion pizzas

Americans ate 3 billion of those, leading to sales that reached $43.3B, according to industry analysts at Gitnux. They estimated that Americans eat an average of 46 slices per person that year.

The global consulting industry was worth roughly $710B in 2023

From 2017 to 2021, the consulting firm McKinsey took in $77M in consulting contracts with just the US Food and Drug Administration alone.

Imagining if Disney films about animals were scientifically accurate

Then when Scar took over from Mufasa, he would have likely killed all of the existing cubs in the pride, including Nala. Or when Nemo's mom died, his dad would technically have become a female.

How Japanese Anime became a global phenomenon

Anime's popularity was once confined to Japan, but the art form has attracted a global audience in the 2020s due in large part to its availability on streaming and increased watch times during the COVID-19 pandemic. This Hollywood Reporter article explains how other factors—including several influential celebrities who consider themselves anime aficionados—have made the genre an international sensation.

The total cost of weather and climate disasters from 1980 to 2024 is almost $3T

The NOAA’s Office of Coastal Management tracks the cost of damage, deaths, and other key statistics related to hurricanes and weather disasters. In 2024, there were 27 billion-dollar disasters, each averaging $1.2B more in damage than the prior five-year average.

Some of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters were designed by Drew Struzan

The artist is responsible for iconic posters advertising "Indiana Jones," "Hook," "The Goonies," and more. His distinctive style—sometimes painted by hand, sometimes drawn with an airbrush—defined the era of the family-friendly family blockbuster.

Christmas trees are a $6B global industry

In the US, the real tree industry is valued at $2B, the reflection of nearly 30 million trees sold annually at an average profit of about $10 per tree. While each tree takes about 8 years to mature, their artificial counterparts can be made much more quickly, mostly in China, valued at over $1B as of 2020.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Dozens of S&P 500 stocks, including Coca-Cola and Walmart—known as the dividend aristocrats—have increased dividends every year for 25 years

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

In 2026, Finland was named the world's happiest country for the ninth consecutive year based on its wealth, social safety network, and high life expectancy, among other factors.

Roughly 43 million US borrowers owe roughly $1.7T in student debt, the second-largest source of consumer debt behind mortgages.

11 people died from firework injuries in the US in 2024.

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

The most expensive ad of all time was for Chanel No. 5 perfume and cost roughly $33M to produce in 2004—about $57M in today's dollars.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Watch how viruses like Ebola can spill over from animals to humans—and vice-versa.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

Fish populations in the Great Barrier Reef have increased after installing waterproof speakers on the ocean floor that played recordings of sounds from healthy coral reefs.

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

The 1987 Nintendo video game 'Stadium Events' isn't known for being particularly fun, but its scarcity has made it a highly sought-after item that has sold for up to $35K at auction.

Before the current East Wing ballroom project, only two White House renovations in the past 100 years cost more than $10M.

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is the largest ground war in Europe since World War II in casualties, forces mobilized, and displacement of civilians.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day