Highlights
- Disney has acquired numerous IPs and brands, including Marvel, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Fox, and Pixar, making their library incredibly large and valuable.
- The Marvel Cinematic Universe stands out as a unique and successful franchise, with a large number of films and shows, an overarching story, and high-quality movies like Guardians of the Galaxy.
- Disney's ownership now extends to iconic franchises like X-Men, Monkey Island, Star Wars, Alien and Predator, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Simpsons, Mickey Mouse, and Disney Princesses, making them a dominant force in various industries.
Disney is one of the biggest companies in the entire world. It's surprisingly not one of the wealthiest, as that's still reserved by tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. However, Disney still holds some of the most profitable IPs and brands of all time.
Starting with their homegrown material to the 2009 purchase of Marvel, the 2012 Lucasfilm purchase, and the 2017 acquisition of 20th Century Fox, their entire library is unfathomably big. With the acquisition of Fox in particular, there are many IPs you might not even realize are now owned by Disney.
10 Marvel Cinematic Universe
Comic books are a unique breed because they continue on stories that have been going on for decades. The Marvel Cinematic Universe was somehow able to replicate that. A franchise with tons of films and shows, and one huge overarching story, it's truly one-of-a-kind.
Many have tried to emulate the MCU formula, but none had the same level of success. A large reason why Avengers: Endgame became the highest-grossing movie ever, for a period, is that it felt like the ending of a story going on since 2008. Plus, most of the movies are really good, and some, like Guardians of the Galaxy, are so quality they can stand on their own.
9 X-Men
The first comic book movie to kickstart the genre's modern era was 1998's Blade. However, the first Superhero non-R-rated feature film to fully kickstart it was 2000's X-Men. While it's aged a bit today, this movie was incredibly important to the genre.
It launched the first huge Superhero film franchise with 13 movies over a 20-year period. Although the Fox acquisition was before the pandemic, X-Men hasn't been fully integrated into the MCU, at least not yet. The 90s cartoon was also very important, leading to more Superhero animated shows, and is still fondly remembered today.
8 Monkey Island
Disney's 2012 purchase of Lucasfilm acquired not only its film franchises but also its gaming division, which at the time was called LucasArts. There may be no other developer as acclaimed as LucasArts in the adventure game genre. Many of its titles are considered the greatest adventure games of all time, and its most well-known series was Monkey Island.
Following Guybrush Threepwood, a lovable pirate whose name nobody can seem to pronounce, these titles are great in their humor and puzzles. The newest installment, Return to Monkey Island, was especially phenomenal. It didn't rely on nostalgia and created a memorable experience just as much as the classics.
7 Star Wars
Star Wars will forever be one of the biggest pop culture brands of all time. Starting in 1977, Star Wars was one of the first blockbusters. This name came from the fact that there was a line around the block to actually see the movie, which, thankfully, isn't an issue today.
Star Wars has 12 theatrical feature films, a bunch of TV Shows, many great books, and a lot of quality video games. In fact, Star Wars is probably one of the oldest gaming franchises because it arose in 1977 when gaming was just starting to boom. The sheer impact of this series is truly a one in a million.
6 Toy Story
Pixar is still Disney's premier animation studio, and it may be surprising to hear Disney didn't own them until 2006, near the release of Cars. This means their biggest franchise Toy Story isn't a homegrown property. Toy Story 1 changed cinema. It was a massive risk that, like Star Wars, many didn't think would work.
A fully CG-animated film (the first-ever) targeted toward the whole family just didn't make sense in 1995. Pixar proved everyone wrong and changed animation forever. The original trilogy is still fantastic, and even the fourth one, while not as good, still has its merits.
5 Alien And Predator
This is one franchise that definitely doesn't fit the Disney mold. Fox owned both the Alien and Predator IPs, but with the Fox acquisition, they're now owned by Disney. Both franchises and their crossovers have a deep media history. Alien was an incredibly influential sci-fi horror movie, while Predator is still seen as one of the greatest action films of all time.
There are a bunch of Alien/Predator movie sequels, comics, and video games as well. This includes the crossovers starting with the original Dark Horse AVP comic series. With Alien and Predator being such iconic monsters within cinema, they're some of the top IPs Disney got from Fox.
4 Pirates Of The Caribbean
At this point, there are a lot of Disney movies based on rides they have at their famous amusement parks, but only one of them has struck gold. That's Pirates Of The Caribbean, a massively successful movie franchise. Still, to this day, it's the pirate movie you think.
Pirates have existed in numerous media for hundreds of years. For movies to have existed since the early 1900s, and the first image you think of when pirate movies come to mind is this franchise, that's a pretty big achievement. While the sequels are inconsistent in quality, the first film still holds up as a classic action-adventure flick.
3 The Simpsons
There may be no other cartoon show as influential and game-changing as The Simpsons. Its satire was just unmatched back in the day and kickstarted many careers for the people who worked on it, like Conan O'Brien.
So many Simpsons clips are still used today in social media, and the show's going strong after all these years. There's been comics, video games, and a 2007 feature film. Watching old-school Simpsons is still a blast today, and frankly, one of the best shows to watch on Disney Plus.
2 Mickey Mouse
Every company the size of Disney needs to have some sort of mascot, and the chosen one here is Mickey Mouse. A character so old it'll be in the public domain in 2024, its iconic logo of two small and one big circle has become tied to the Disney brand. A really fun aspect of going to a Disney park is finding all the hidden Mickeys.
Some are well hidden, like the one consisting of solar panels in Disney World. Disney still makes new Mickey cartoons, and while those are enjoyable, the original ones are the best. They are so good they're often watched in film college courses.
1 Disney Princess
Besides Mickey Mouse, the other thing you think of when hearing the word Disney is the all-star cast of Disney Princesses. Starting from 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to 2009's The Princess and the Frog, Disney might have the best catalog of 2D animated movies.
Many of these films were made at a totally different time in terms of how animation was done, and they're impressive and still hold up. Nowadays, all these classic films have been remade into live-action, and while those have been divisive, nothing will take away the greatness of the originals.