The Walt Disney Company reported its quarterly earnings today for its third fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2018, and although the company missed Wall Street estimates, the Studio Entertainment division was a major bright spot.
Studio Entertainment revenue grew 20 percent year over year to $2.9 billion, mostly due to the success of
Avengers: Infinity War and
Incredibles 2. Both films performed incredibly well at the box office for Disney, with Marvel's
Infinity War becoming the fourth highest grossing domestic movie of all time ($678M) and a worldwide total of over $2 billion. Pixar's
Incredibles 2, meanwhile, has reached No. 9 on the domestic charts; its $583.9M domestic gross has
made it the highest grossing animated film of all time at the domestic box office. It has
also passed the $1 billion mark at the international box office.
Studio Entertainment revenue was further boosted by the continuing performance of
Black Panther as well as the release of Lucasfilm's
Solo: A Star Wars Story. Unfortunately, the latter film did little to boost Studio revenue. Although the
Star Wars was franchise is normally a surefire hit at the box office,
Solo failed to deliver on expectations and was ultimately deemed a disappointment. There was no specific mention of
Solo's box office performance and as Deadline notes,
"The earnings release contained no commentary about a financial write-down of the film’s losses of up to $50 million, which many analysts had predicted."
Disney also briefly mentioned lower domestic home entertainment sales results due to a
"decrease in unit sales driven by the timing of the release of Star Wars titles." Specifically, Disney explained,
"The DVD/Blu-ray release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi was in the second quarter of the current year whereas the DVD/Blu-ray release of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story occurred in the prior-year third quarter."
It's crazy to think if
Solo performed even a little better at the box office, Disney would be looking at over $3 billion in Studio Entertainment revenue. For the nine-month period, Disney's Studio Entertainment has posted $7.8 billion in revenue, a 13 percent increase so far year over year.
As a company, The Walt Disney Company reported total revenue of $15.23 billion, an 18 percent increase over the prior year quarter, though just shy of analyst expectations of $15.34 billion. The Parks and Resorts segment saw revenue increase 6 percent to $5.2 billion, while Media Networks also saw an increase of 5 percent to $6.2 billion. The only division to report a decrease was Consumer Products & Interactive Media which decreased 8% to $1 billion.
Suffice to say, things are looking up for Disney.