Disney Films Top 2019 Box Office

January 17, 2020

7 Advanced Culture & Entertainment

Exercise 1

Vocabulary
gross /groʊs/ to earn an amount of money before tax
Verb
Top earning mobile phone games can gross more
than 3 million dollars a day.

distribution /ˌdɪstrəˈbjuːʃən/
Noun the act of delivering something or making it available to
people

He is in charge of mail distribution for our

neighborhood.
We have created a new distribution channel
through a European partner.
Biogeography is the study of the distribution of
species of plants and animals.
Workers have gone on strike at a major retail
distribution center in Germany.

market /ˈmɑːrkɪt/
Noun a particular country, area, etc. in which business or trade
takes place

Asia is a key market for our company.

The company plans to expand to foreign markets.
We're targeting the children's market.
India will be an important market for our
company.

box office /bɑːks ˈɔːfɪs/

Noun
 the place in a cinema where tickets can be bought

The Lion King earned more than 1.5 billion dollars

at the box office.

share /ʃer/
Noun a part of something that is divided between people or
groups

Your share of the profit will be 20%.

review /rɪˈvjuː/
Noun a report in which somebody gives their opinion about a
book, movie, etc.

I always read the book reviews in the newspaper.

Exercise 2

Article
Disney Films Top 2019 Box Office

The top five films of 2019 were all made by Disney, with the company
even helping make the sixth biggest film as Disney’s Marvel Studios
produced the film Spider-Man: Far From Home .

Disney made about $13 billion in worldwide box office sales in 2019
and had a record number of $1 billion releases. Star Wars: The Rise of
Skywalker is expected to make $1 billion, which means Disney will
have seven in total. The others were: Avengers: Endgame (the highest
grossing release ever), The Lion King , Captain Marvel , Aladdin, Toy
Story 4 and Frozen II.

However, even though Disney had a good year, overall ticket sales in
theaters in the US and Canada were down 4.4% from the year before,
according to data firm Comscore.
This is because when a film does well these days, it does extremely
well, but if it has bad reviews, people just don’t buy tickets.

Cathleen Taff, distribution chief for Disney said, "If [a film is] not
great, [audiences] do have other options. But when it is great, people
show up. And we've seen that this year with seven $1 billion movies."

Some people are concerned that Disney has such a big share of the
market. Director Martin Scorsese said he was worried when he went
to a cinema and Avengers: Endgame was playing on 11 of its 12
screens.

But other film studios did well in 2019 too; Jordan Peele’s Us, for
Universal, was the highest grossing original movie. Lionsgate's Knives
Out, and Sony's Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood were also both
box office hits. Korean film Parasite and American-Chinese director
Lulu Wang's The Farewell were also successful around the world.

Will Smith as "Genie" in Disney's adaptation of the 1992 animated

classic "Aladdin."
Exercise 3

Discussion
1. Do you find it surprising that the top five films of 2019 were made by
Disney?

2. Have you seen any of the movies featured in the article? Which ones
would you recommend?

3. What is your favorite Disney film? What do you like about it?

4. What would you say was the best movie of 2019? Why?

5. Do you ever read movie reviews before deciding what to watch? If so,
what websites do you use?

Exercise 4

Further Discussion
1. What's the last movie you saw at the cinema? Did you like it?

2. What's your favorite thing about watching a movie at the cinema?

3. What upcoming movies are you looking forward to seeing?

4. Have you ever posted a movie review online? If so, what film did you
review and how did you rate it?

5. What films made in your country would you recommend?

Exercise 5

Quotes
1. Never judge a book by its movie. – J.W. Eagan. What do you think
Eagan means by this?

2. Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater. – Roman