Beyond Obvious

Business Insider has been reading entertainment data ...

[The Walt Disney Company], which has two animation studios, has vastly outperformed its competitors, luring audiences to theaters in droves to see new stories and sequels to franchise titles. Disney’s brand reputation, stellar storytelling and emotional resonance has kept it at the top of the box office.

The debut of “Frozen II” last weekend combined with the billion-dollar “Toy Story 4″ means Disney has now garnered more than $1.4 billion in ticket sales from its animated movies so far in 2019. And “Frozen II” still has plenty of room to grow ...

... but sadly, it doesn't read very well. Disney owns a lot more than two animation studios.

It owns Pixar (purchased from Steve Jobs). It owns Blue Sky Studios (purchased from Rupert Murdoch). It owns the Walt Disney Animation studios*.

Those are the studios that make theatrical animation, which focus on long-form features shown in multiplexes.

Then there are the TV animation studios: Walt Disney Television Animation and Fox Animation. These do pre-production on smaller screen fare slated for Disney+, the Disney Channel, broadcast television (remember that ancient distribution system?)

Disney dominates because Disney has put big money into animation, and also owns ... ahem ... some pretty potent brands.

Paramount-Viacom has never gotten much traction in theatrical animation, and its television outpost Nickeloden is a shadow of its former self. Warner Bros. had misfires in animation for years until its new division W.A.G. (warner Animation Group) struck gold with its Lego features. (Its television animation studio Warner Bros. Animation has been a force since the early nineties.) Sony makes has made some competitive cartoon features, and Universal-Comcast has found success with Illumination Entertainment and DreamWorks Animation.

But let's face it. Disney has been building synergy between its various divisions and production facilities forever. Uncle Walt was a master at having one part of his company boost and reinforce another, pretty much inventing the practice in the 1950s. And with Robert Iger, the practice has been super-charged to the point of near total dominance of the marketplace.

* Let's not forget DisneyToon Studios, which created direct-to-video and theatrical features for a quarter century, finally closing its doors the summer of 2018 when the dvd market was deader than a school of beached mackerel.