Abstract

In 2014, Disney’s The Lion King “claimed a new crown”: top box-office title of all time, with its 22 productions worldwide having generated gross earnings of more than $6.2 billion. ¹ As Charlotte Alter noted, this made The Lion King more successful economically than

any Hunger Games movie, or Frozen. Avatar, which is the highest-grossing movie in history, has made less than half of what The Lion King musical has made, at $2.8 billion worldwide gross. The Associated Press reports that The Lion King musical eclipsed The Phantom of the Opera, the previous highest-grossing work, late this summer [2014]. ²