Studio Report Cards: Disney

TheWrap has done a series of Studio Report Cards assessing how well — or not — the major studios did in terms of box office performance in 2010. I’ll be featuring excerpts from those articles each day for the next week or so. Today: Disney

Disney
Grade: B
Disney was the first studio to have two billion-dollar grossers in one year in “Alice in Wonderland” and “Toy Story,” but huge production costs and low b.o. on “Prince of Persia” and “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” offset the wins.

It was a year of transition for Disney, with Rich Ross — who took over the chairmanship from Dick Cook in October of last year — making big executive changes in almost every major department.

Going into the year, Disney executives spoke openly about cost containment. “We didn’t make money on some of these movies because they cost too much,” lamented theatrical distribution president Chuck Viane, who was kept on by Ross, in TheWrap’s 2009 Disney Studio Report Card.

And there were efforts to control costs in 2010, perhaps most publicly, convincing Jerry Bruckheimer to trim the production budget on the upcoming “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.”

But studio brass had to once again live with big price tags for this year’s slate — with many of the studio’s films costing well in excess of $200 million.

Not that it really mattered for its two biggest hits, 3D films “Alice in Wonderland” and “Toy Story 3,” which together made Disney the first studio ever to release two billion-dollar grossers in the same year.

Cost did, however, matter on films like the 3D-animated “Tangled,” which was developed over several years by Disney/Pixar animation guru John Lasseter at a widely reported nut of $260 million.

The solid performance at the worldwide box office by the Rapunzel-themed film — $232.4 million and counting — is helping relieve some hair loss in Burbank, though profitability long-term still seems iffy.

Tomorrow: Paramount.