My stats a few pages back about the 2019 US cinema grosses turned out to incorrect in a couple of ways:
I previously used in-year releases total rather than calendar year totals, this year did indeed turn out to be a year of average attendance, lower than last year, but average still, rather than the notable decline suggested.
However, the Disney share of the annual gross was even more than I previously suggested, as just ten Disney releases this last year accounted for a whopping 32.99% of this last year's total. Meaning the other 894 films released last year amassed just $7.5b between them.
I'm not going to do a year-by-year study to find out how far back you'd have to go to find a year where all movies apart from Disney is just $7.5b, but logic suggests a very long time ago. Like over 10 years probably.
I also inaccurately said that it was a low year for movies getting to the $100m mark, when this was not the case as 29 movies did indeed make that mark this year, though this is still the lowest number since 2016. And nine of them were Disney (nearly one third).
And this really was a year of the big guns for Disney:
The last film of their Star Wars universe series.
The last film of their Avengers universe series.
Another Toy Story movie.
Another Frozen movie.
A remake of The Lion King.
They really shot their load this last year. This coming year, while more exciting in the gaming sphere, will be an extremely interesting one for cinema releases as I seriously doubt Disney can follow that kind of line-up for a very long time. I dunno, just the whole essence of their output this year screams of cashing in their chips as fast as possible, dunno though, it's very weird.
Due to the strong Christmas showing, the top 10 non-franchise/sequel/universe movies has altered somewhat, not in what it contains, just in the order of the top 10 with Ford vs Ferrari and Knives Out getting really strong Christmas attention (actual year ranking in brackets):
1. Us (12) ($175m)
2. Pokémon Detective Pikachu (17)
3. Once Upon a TimeÂ… in Hollywood (18)
4. Knives Out (21)
5. The Upside (26)
6. Ford vs Ferrari (27)
7. Hustlers (29)
8. Rocketman (32)
9. Alita: Battle Angel (33)
10. Good Boys (34) ($83m)
You know it's come to something when you start to feel sorry for the likes of Warner Brothers and Sony!