‘Lion King’ Roars To $1 Billion Box Office Earnings In Three Weeks

Barely three weeks after its release, Disney’s “The Lion King” has crossed the billion-dollar mark, with the live-action remake of the 1994 movie featuring Beyonce, Donald Glover and Chiwetel Ejiofor in lead roles, joining “Avengers: Endgame”, “Captain Marvel” and “Aladdin” as the fourth Disney title to surpass one billion dollars in global ticket sales for 2019.

With its blockbuster slate, Disney has nearly 38 percent of the domestic market share, a cut that increases to more than 40 percent when Fox, which it just purchased, is added.  A breakdown of the fugure shows “The Lion King’ earned 361 million dollars at the domestic box office and 638 million dollars overseas.

Outside of North America, it had especially strong showings in China with 115 million dollars along with the United Kingdom with 48 million dollars and Brazil with 44 million dollars.

The box office milestone by the movie, which stars Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen as Timon and Pumbaa, with James Earl Jones reprising his role as Mufasa from the original animated film, comes on the heels of another Disney benchmark as the company set a new all-time record for global ticket sales for a single studio between July 26 and July 28.

Disney hit 7.67 billion dollars worldwide, smashing the mark it previously set in 2016 with 7.61 billion dollars.