Deadline’s Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament has returned, and as you’ll see from the most profitable films of 2024, a movie’s game doesn’t end at the box office. Rather, its downstream revenues and subsequent home windows must be taken into account. Streaming continues to be a wildcard: While traditional motion picture studios such as Disney, Warner Bros, Sony, Paramount and Universal rely on lucrative pay two and pay three streamer deals to catapult their slates into the black, those streamers who’ve embraced theatrical (specifically Amazon MGM Studios and Apple Original Films) have a clandestine metric as to how they evaluate a movie’s post-cinema success. By traditional studio P&L standards, some of those releases would be considered flops. Given that, Apple and Amazon are excluded from this year’s survey. The Most Valuable Blockbuster series runs later rather than sooner as we gather the best data possible from seasoned and trusted sources on 2024’s event films, bombs, and low- to midsize-budget wins.
The Film
MUFASA: THE LION KING
Disney
It was always a plan that one of Disney’s highest-grossing movies, 2019’s $1.66 billion grossing live-action-like take The Lion King, would get another installment. Not counted here as public companies keep such figures largely under wraps are merchandise revenues, but from what we’ve been told, The Lion King merch money is the second highest after Moana 2. The Lion King is one of the bigger cross-studio properties for Disney, activating across parks, consumer products, streaming, games, books, etc. So, it stands to reason that Lion King would receive some sort of next installment.
Mufasa was greenlit in September 2020, just as theaters were reopening with Warner Bros’ Tenet; surprisingly enough, under the tenure of then-Disney CEO Bob Chapek, the prequel wasn’t intended to go straight to Disney+, but rather the big screen. Scribe Jeff Nathanson came up with a compelling story with a Shakespearean sentiment that moved Moonlight Oscar winner Barry Jenkins, who was a rabid fan of the original 1994 original animated movie having watched it with his nephews. For him, Mufasa repped an opportunity for “furthering my work chronicling the lives and souls of folk within the African diaspora.” The setup followed the early days of Mufasa as an orphaned cub and his relationship with Scar, the heir to royal bloodline, and his family. Seth Rogen (Pumbaa), Billy Eichner (Timon), Donald Glover (Simba), Beyoncé Knowles-Carter (Nala) and John Kani (Rafiki) reprised their roles from the 2019 movie. Aaron Pierre joined as the young Mufasa, and Kelvin Harrison Jr as Taka. Lin-Manuel Miranda was enlisted to write the songs as he almost starred in Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk. Miranda worked with the original performer on the 1994 movie, Lebo M, to co-pen songs.
The Box Score
The Bottom Line
Reviews for Mufasa at 56% on Rotten Tomatoes weren’t as dazzling as the original 1994 animated movie, which stands at 93% certified fresh. But the reviews weren’t shiny on the Jon Favreau-directed 2019 redo either. No matter, Mufasa scored an A- CinemaScore to the 2019 version’s A. In regard to the theatrical release, Disney played a game of chicken by dating on top of another family movie on December 20, Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3. The initial domestic opening in the pre-Christmas corridor wasn’t that dazzling for Mufasa related to its $200M production cost, ranking No. 2 with $35.4M to Sonic 3‘s $60.1M. It was shocking indeed given how Disney has dominated the Christmas field in the past with Avatar and Star Wars movies. Mufasa had an excellent overseas start with $122.2M worldwide, however, and its eventual overseas take of $463M is what made the difference in the end in regards to the prequel reaching profitability. Stateside, family moviegoing always explodes post-Christmas, and that’s when Mufasa began to show his claws against Sonic. Mufasa won Christmas Day over Sonic 3 $14.7M-$10.3M, and then went on to finish No. 1 in its third and fifth weekends at the box office. In the end, Mufasa outstripped Sonic 3 at the domestic box office $254.5M-$236.1M, and worldwide $722.3M-$491.9M.
The hold of Mufasa can also be attributed to Disney having a longer theatrical window to PVOD then Sonic 3, 60 days compared with 32 days. Some will argue a simultaneous theatrical and PVOD window doesn’t diminish ticket sales on a family movie, but for Disney more box office spoils came as a longer exhibition window allowed the studio to hold premium large-format screens longer. The $175M global TV and streaming revenues include what Disney pays itself to stream Mufasa on Disney+; a formula we know isn’t the old 10% of box office, but rather a complicated metrics formula. The takeaway here with Mufasa: the year-end holiday corridor is big enough to support two family blockbusters, and as we saw with Sinners this past weekend, it’s better to judge a movie on its merits once it has a chance to breathe. For Disney, Mufasa won in the long game with a net profit of $175M.
