There are a lot of takeaways from Walt Disney's (DIS 0.63%) generally upbeat -- but poorly received -- fiscal third-quarter report on Wednesday morning. I'll just focus on one thin slice of the media giant's business: Disney's penchant for sequels. More specifically, I want to zero in on a piece that enthusiasts tend to shake their heads at, although it's something that should excite shareholders.
Disney has now put out the world's highest-grossing films in May (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes), June (Inside Out 2), and July (Deadpool & Wolverine). It's great to see that Disney's studios are back after languishing through more misses than hits in the 2023 calendar year, but don't sleep on the fact that all three of these monthly box office winners are sequels.
NYSE: DIS
Key Data Points
The second time's the charm
Many diehard fans -- and I am one -- crave original properties. They want new stories with new characters on the screen. They applaud the arrival of a new ride or attraction that isn't based on existing intellectual property. Unfortunately, nostalgia, when improved, sells too well to ignore.
Let's go beyond the last three months of mastering the multiplex. Over the last 10 years, the 10 highest-grossing films worldwide put out by Disney have been either sequels or remakes. Each one has raked in at least $1.4 billion in global ticket sales. The streak is actually the 11 highest-grossing Disney films over the last 11 years, but I like my symmetry in even numbers. It's the same poetry that drives consumers to the local cinema to check in on the characters in franchises they have grown up on.
Disney continues to crank out original properties between its crowd-drawing sequels. Even the best of storytellers likes to spin a new yarn from time to time to stay fresh. However, perhaps the best thing about Moana being introduced to audiences almost eight years ago is that shareholders have to feel encouraged about Moana 2's chances when it premieres later this year. They know how far it'll go.
Image source: Getty Images.
Joy returns, in more ways than one
Disney offered some particularly granular insight into the bar-raising success of Inside Out 2 this summer. The film has already exceeded expectations by topping $1.5 billion in box office receipts worldwide. It's now the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, so it had to pass every single animated feature release to get there.
However, Disney revealed that the original 2015 Inside Out has generated 100 million views on Disney+ since the first trailer for Inside Out 2 dropped. The entertainment tastemaker believes that the event was enough to drum up more than 1.3 million new sign-ups to Disney's namesake premium service.
If you're wondering why Disney announced a price hike across its three streaming video services this week despite cutting costs over the past year, you're onto something. Disney's digital vault keeps growing, and every sequel it puts out will bring back audiences wanting to revisit where things started. Did you catch Deadpool & Wolverine last month when it scored the biggest opening weekend for an R-rated film? You can spend days, if not weeks, trying to find the source materials referenced throughout that Marvel mechanical-bull of a movie.
The media stock giant knows what it's doing. Don't boo Moana 2. Don't keep Mufasa out of "tu casa" when Mufasa: The Lion King follows with more gold on the silver screen a month later. Don't let my bad poetry get in the way of the symmetry -- Disney has a pretty good track record of making sure that a hit original property isn't a hard act to follow.
