Walt Disney and The Lion King: An Introduction

by lndz197 on October 20, 2011

By Lindsay V.

The Lion King was produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and was released in 1994 by Walt Disney Pictures. In this day and age, if you’ve never heard of Disney then people would probably think you’ve been living under a rock. But really, as a whole, The Walt Disney Company, founded in 1932, is definitely an entertainment force to be reckoned with. “The Walt Disney Company, together with its subsidiaries and affiliates, is a leading diversified international family entertainment and media enterprise” says The Walt Disney Company corporate website. And that seems to be the understatement of the century.

Walt Disney and the “Big Six”

Today, The Walt Disney company is one of the “Big Six” major media conglomerates (definition) that control nearly 90% of the box office in the United States and Canada. While it is not the leader of the “Big Six”, The Walt Disney company’s main studio subsidiary, Walt Disney Pictures, was ranked third in 2010, in control of 14.01% of the market share. The major conglomerates ahead of The Walt Disney Company in market share are Time Warner and Viacom, Time Warner being the leader with 17.93% of the market share. The major conglomerates behind The Walt Disney Company are News Corporation, Sony Corporation of America and Comcast/General Electric. The reason why some of these may not sound so familiar is because what the world is more often exposed to are the major studio subsidiaries of these conglomerates. Names like Warner Bros. Pictures, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures and Universal may sound much more familiar to many, but really they are all subsidiaries controlled by the larger conglomerates. See the familiar logos below?

Walt Disney and Animation

It is not just the fact that The Lion King is a Walt Disney film that makes it such a big deal, however. The Lion King is an animated film, and there are are not nearly as many film studios that do animation. Today, the film still remains to be the highest grossing film of Disney Animation Studios. Animated or not, The Lion King is one of the top twenty highest-grossing films worldwide of all time, but as far as animated films go, it is the third highest-grossing animated film worldwide of all time, having grossed over $900 million. Also, among the top twenty films on that list, The Lion King is the only film that was released before the year 2000. So that’s saying something.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, through Walt Disney Pictures, is clearly a top competitor in animated films, but there are a few other prominent competitors in animation. Some other big names in the business, on the list right up with Disney, are distributors such as DreamWorks Animation, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures and Columbia Pictures. Those are the companies that take over most of the highest-grossing animated films worldwide, but Walt Disney is a prominent leader. Of those top 50 films, Walt Disney Pictures has its name on 26 of them. A very big name in animation studios these days is Pixar, which was bought by The Walt Disney Company in 2006, and Disney-Pixar films take up 12 spots on that list.

To some, the powerful empire that is Disney is far too much to handle; to many, Disney’s films, like The Lion King, are some of the most beloved films of the century and are films that will be treasured for all time. Dramatic? Maybe, maybe not. But whatever opinion you may have, The Lion King has without a doubt made its mark in the movie industry, and will definitely be a film continues to have a big impact on the media for years to come. And we have Mr. Mouse to thank for that.