Disney found Dory, and then it found a pot of gold. Over this past weekend, Finding Dory swam to a pretty spectacular box office total of $50.1 million worldwide, pushing Disney past the $5 billion global box office mark in record fashion. The film studio is almost a week ahead of Universal, who last year crossed $5 billion on July 17 thanks to the monster success of Jurassic World. Disney also beat Universal in terms of getting to $3 billion internationally — it managed this milestone on July 6, two days ahead of Universal’s July 8 record last year.
Disney’s success this year comes after a much more modest 2015, as it previously took until December 20 for the company to hit the $5 billion mark. But now, just seven months into 2016, Disney is already holding strong at $5.02 billion.
Not only has Finding Dory performed phenomenally well, but a number of other Disney films have also catapulted these creatives to huge financial success. Zootopia and The Jungle Book both attracted larger than anticipated audiences, with the former making over $1 billion worldwide and the latter sitting close behind at $935 million. And of course, there were some shoe-in moneymakers, like Captain America: Civil War.
But all pales in comparison to Dory, which just became the highest-grossing film of 2016’s summer with domestic box office totals of over $420 million. Moreover, it’s taken the title of highest-grossing Disney animated feature ever domestically, and it’s only been out for four weeks. It’s also the second most popular animated release across all studios.
But it’s still not over for Disney. Later this year, we can expect more big numbers from Pete’s Dragon, slated for an August 12 release; Marvel’s Doctor Strange, to hit theaters November 4; and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which you’ll be able to check out on December 16.
So if you’re looking to go to the movies sometime soon, chances are you’ll be contributing to Disney’s gargantuan year.
