The Lion King, 2019 ($250 million)
This movie is one of Disney’s greatest successes to date, netting the company over $1.6 billion in revenue and surpassing Frozen to become the highest-grossing animated film of all time in less than 6 months after its release. Not to be confused with the 1994 classic, this iteration of the Lion King story is anything but playfully animated, in fact, this movie was shown to real lions and they showed brain activity of species recognition in CAT (no pun intended) scans afterward. In addition to being Disney's greatest animated success, the Lion King was also its most expensive endeavor in the animation department, which clearly paid off in the long run.
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