Disney: Unsurprisingly, Disney is the number one film studio right now, thanks to Avengers: Age of Ultron (which just entered the top 10 movies of all-time only three-and-a-half weeks into its run), Cinderellas gross which should wind up just over $200 million as well as the sleeper hit MacFarland USA. However, not everything is perfect for the company, as seen by Tomorrowland, which will easily go down as one of the biggest box office duds of the summer. The $190 million film will struggle to hit $100 million by the end of its run, despite being given a cushy Memorial Day release date.
Universal: Truthfully, Universal Studios will have no trouble becoming the biggest studio of the year once 2015 is over, thanks to Minions and Jurassic World still in its future. However, even now, things have been great for Universal, thanks to Furious 7 overperforming to become one of the biggest films of all-time, while Pitch Perfect 2 has similarly surpassed all expectations and Fifty Shades of Grey has started a new franchise. Its two biggest box office duds come courtesy of Legendary Pictures, which helps create numerous films for Universal. Hopefully, future endeavors between the two will be less like 2015 failures Blackhat and Seventh Son, neither of which crossed $20 million.
Warner Bros.: The fellows at WB have had their 2015 grosses significantly boosted by American Sniper (which is technically a 2014 film), which has grossed an astounding $349 million so far. Their offerings for this year have been less notable, with some decent grossers like Focus (which pulled in $53 million) and Get Hard (which has culminated $89 million so far) being balanced out by major misses like Jupiter Ascending and Hot Pursuit. Interestingly, their only movie released this year to make $100 million is Mad Max: Fury Road, which is showing remarkable box office stamina, while their newest movie, San Andreas, just became a huge summertime surprise by opening to a terrific $54 million.
20th Century Fox: These folks have a bit more quite of a year than usual, which doesn't mean they have nothing lined up for 2015, but it does feel more low-key with only one DreamWorks Animation film and no X-Men features on the slate. So far, the studios offerings have actually fared well, with Home and Kingsman: The Secret Service doing surprisingly well (especially Kingsman, which endured for quite a while at the box office), and the only major miss being Unfinished Business, which is easily the lowest grossing comedy of Vince Vaughns career.
Paramount: Paramount is such an odd studio. They release only a few movies a year, and usually cram a bunch of them in a three week timespan (namely in the fall). That's what happened this year, with them only releasing three movies so far in 2015, and all of them came out in a four week period. The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water is easily the most successful of the group, almost doubling its predecessors gross with a $163 million cume. However, Project Almanac underwhelmed and Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is one of the years biggest box office bombs.
Lionsgate: The problem with Lionsgate as a studio is they typically have one or two big movies a year, while the rest of their slate is comprised of duds. Starting in 2016 (the first year since 2011 where they won't have a Hunger Games movie on the schedule), Lionsgate will try to be more like a conventional studio and make a larger portion of their projects more high profile, but until then, their 2015 grosses so far show such change is quite needed. While they're so far ahead of one of the fix major movie studios, their slate is the very definition of mixed; The DUFF and The Age of Adeline are solid, while Insurgent made less money than Divergent, and Mortdecai is a now legendary box office failure.
Sony/Columbia: After that hacking fiasco closed out 2014 on a sour note, the studio really could use some good news from their 2015 movies. Unfortunately, their highest grossing film so far this year is Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, whose $67 million gross is less than half of the first movie. Aside from that Kevin James vehicle, the studio has only released three movies, one of which (The Wedding Ringer) fared decently, while Chappie and Aloha are gigantic box office bombs. Interestingly, Sony/Columbia has a number of surefire hits around the corner (Ricki And The Flash will no doubt become a late summer hit, while Spectre will easily become the studios second movie to hit $1 billion worldwide), which is a sharp contrast to the dismal results they've had so far in 2015.
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