Box office endgame: Is Disney’s dominance bad for the movies?

Watching Disney’s Moana at the weekend with my daughter offered a fascinating illustration of the stunning success of another of the company’s properties: the all-conquering Avengers: Endgame.

Moana was a highly successful movie. According to Box Office Mojo, it grossed $643.3m over 2016 and 2017, one of a run of four Disney animated films to break the $600m barrier.

Released on Thursday, Endgame, the epic conclusion to a sprawling mass of Marvel movies, has raked in nearly twice that in just its opening run.

Playing to sold out theatres around the world, the film threatens to redefine the word “blockbuster” for a generation. It is already the biggest film of 2019, a title it won’t relinquish even to the concluding episode of the latest Star Wars saga due at the end of the year. That, by the way, is another Disney property.

The entertainment giant is hitting its competitors with a Thanos-style Infinity Gauntlet.

And it’s just added Rupert Murdoch’s Fox to its arsenal.

The combination of those two is rather like giving the Incredible Hulk a shot of anabolic steroids.

There were already people wondering whether we were getting too much Disney even before the acquisition cleared its last regulatory hurdle. After it? Studios’ share of the global gross varies year by year, but the two of them combined typically boast well over a third. This year that number may be higher still.

Those critical of Disney are struggling to be heard at a time when the world’s movie goers are being dazzled by the latest Avengers epic – and when, with analysts wondering whether it will top Avatar’s $2.8bn, Wall Street is drooling over a share price that had already added 30 per cent since the start of the year.

But there are nonetheless one or two voices in the wilderness who have made some important points that even a fan boy like me can recognise.

They fear that the Fox deal, and Endgame’s dominance, may ultimately lead to fewer movies being made, as Marvel’s heroes sweep all before them and rival studios concentrate their resources on their own expensive-to-produce comic book properties (Warner has DC Comics’ roster and Sony has the rights to various Spider-Man-linked characters).

Then there is the question of Disney’s ability to dictate terms.

Remember the fuss over Netflix’s Roma? The Best Film Oscar nomination sparked controversy because it enjoyed only a very limited cinematic release, a common feature of Netflix properties.

The streaming service refuses to grant the big cinema chains their cherished 90-day window between opening and home video/streaming release with its films. Roma was thus restricted to a relatively small number of art house theatres.

Critics – including Steven Spielberg no less – argued that the film should have been treated as made for TV and therefore ruled ineligible for the silver screen’s biggest prizes.

But what if Disney, which is seeking to challenge Netflix’s streaming power, were to challenge the window? Would chains really deny themselves the chance to screen a Marvel smash? How about Frozen 2? Or Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker?

Were Disney to act in a way that damaged the silver screen (you can debate whether squeezing the window would actually do that) it would ultimately be cutting off its nose to spite its face.

But it wouldn’t be the first time a mega-corporation had taken such a step.

The concerns the company provokes on this score are valid.

On the other hand, consider how Disney’s – and Marvel’s – box office mojo has come about.

No one has ever attempted to create anything quite like the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), with its multiple interlinked franchises and their shared continuity.

Marvel’s biggest names had been licensed to rival studios when Disney embarked on the journey to make cinematic history with the MCU, and it was by no means a sure thing that it would pull it off when it made its debut with the first Iron Man film.

Even after it became clear that it had created a commercial force, the company didn’t hurry. It allowed the property to develop over time, and learned from its mistakes (not least the Incredible Hulk, which is these days treated like a bit of an unloved step child).

Disney took risks with the MCU. And it deserves credit for that.

The pay off for doing so has been handsome. Not all of its outings have been $1bn plus monsters - in addition to the four Avengers movies, Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther, Captain Marvel and Iron Man 3 have all broken through that barrier – but their commercial and critical consistency is quite remarkable.

Disney’s behaviour will merit careful scrutiny over the coming years. You can certainly debate whether America’s competition, or rather its anti-trust, watchdogs really did their jobs by allowing the Fox deal to proceed.

But shouldn’t the focus be as much on Disney’s rivals, which have been scrambling to copy its formula rather than taking risks of their own, and with decidedly mixed results?

Warner Bros, for example, launched DC Comics’ extended universe in a tearing hurry to catch up, and seemed to have decided that the best way to do that was to strip its films of what makes Marvel’s so much fun. Only recently has it changed its approach, with Aquaman, and the child-friendly Shazam!.

Those who dislike the MCU, its superhero films and their continuing dominance at the global box office, might be best off training their repulsor rays on its rivals.

They need to make better movies.