Marvel movies gave the domestic box office a lifeline last year, as theaters in the US struggled through the pandemic.
Five of the top six movies at the domestic box office in 2021 were Marvel movies from Disney or Sony, including "Spider-Man: No Way Home" and "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings."
Disney topped the domestic box office in terms of market share with 25.5% of business, according to data firm Comscore, despite releasing some movies simultaneously to theaters and Disney+ for an additional fee.
The total domestic box office in 2021 was $4.58 billion, according to Comscore. It doubled 2020's total but was down nearly 60% from 2019.
Sony followed closely behind Disney with 23%, thanks to "No Way Home" and another Marvel release, "Venom: Let There Be Carnage."
The studio owns the film rights to the Spider-Man franchise, which includes 600 Marvel characters ("No Way Home" was a joint production between Sony and Disney's Marvel Studios, but Sony retained distribution rights).
The bottom line: The Marvel brand still dominates the box office, even after Disney experimented with the simultaneous release of "Black Widow" and as the Marvel Cinematic Universe expands into TV on Disney+. The MCU is the biggest movie franchise of all time with $25 billion across 27 movies, and that likely won't change any time soon.
Warner Bros., meanwhile, trailed Disney, Sony, and Universal, showing the limitations of its hybrid release strategy at the box office. The studio released in 2021 all of its movies simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max. This year, it committed to a 45-day window on its theatrical releases.
But the strategy did seemingly help boost subscribers for Max. The streaming service and its cable counterpart HBO finished 2021 with nearly 74 million global subscribers, ahead of forecasts.
Below are seven Hollywood studios ranked by how much they grossed in 2021 at the domestic box office: