Disney+ has a new top movie in town, and the fact that this brand-new fantasy film has topped a space opera that became one of the highest-grossing movies of all time is actually not that surprising. Disney+’s movie library makes it one of the go-to streaming services for a few genres. Among the ones that perform the best at the streamer is sci-fi.
The reason for that is quite clear. As the streaming home of iconic cinematic franchises, Disney+ holds several releases from the Star Wars universe. Other sci-fi or sci-fi-adjacent franchises with either movies or TV shows available on the streaming service include Alien, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and James Cameron’s Avatar. The latter has marked its name in history as a trailblazer.
After all, it was Cameron’s first entry in the franchise, 2009’s Avatar, that helped popularize 3D as a theatrical format. That film has since become the highest-grossing movie of all time, with its sequel, 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water, breaking the $2 billion mark. More recently, the final movie in the franchise’s original chapter was released to global success.
That would be Avatar: Fire and Ash. Before the upcoming Avatar 4 changes the state of the franchise with a planned time jump, the third entry in the space opera franchise came close to $1.5 billion at the worldwide box office. It became a major hit on Disney+ when it released there recently, but now another film has taken over the sci-fi sensation’s crown.
Avatar: Fire And Ash Was Dethroned By A Massive Disney Franchise
Avatar: Fire and Ash was released on Disney+ on June 24, and all it took for the space opera to land at the top of the streamer’s global charts was a single day of availability on the platform. Since then, the sci-fi movie has reigned supreme on Disney+, but all good things must come to an end. Avatar: Fire and Ash was finally dethroned close to its one-month mark at the head of the streamer’s global charts, with Descendants: Wicked Wonderland currently standing as the most-watched movie on Disney+ worldwide. The new fantasy movie passed Cameron’s epic on July 19.
It took a little longer for Descendants: Wicked Wonderland to become Disney+’s #1 movie compared to Avatar: Fire and Ash. The fantasy musical was released on Disney+ on July 17, needing two days to pass the third Avatar film, according to FlixPatrol. Right now, both films rank higher than popular movies like Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, Moana 2, Avengers: Endgame, Toy Story 4, and many more. Descendants: Wicked Wonderland is trending in 73 countries, ranking as high as Disney+’s #1 movie in 52 of them, which is a massive feat.
Why Descendants: Wicked Wonderland Is Worth Watching On Disney+
Descendants: Wicked Wonderland is not only an exciting fantasy movie, but also the fifth entry in a successful franchise, which helps explain why it has surpassed Avatar: Fire and Ash on Disney+’s charts so quickly. The Descendants movie franchise focuses on the children of several fan-favorite Disney heroes and villains. Some of the characters featured in the long-running universe include Dove Cameron’s Mal, aka the daughter of Maleficent, Sofia Carson’s Evie, the daughter of the Evil Queen, Cameron Boyce’s Carlos de Vil, aka Cruella’s son, and Booboo Stewart’s Jay, Jafar’s son.
Descendants’ movies have mostly performed well. The original trilogy holds critics’ scores of 90%, 83%, and 78%, respectively, on Rotten Tomatoes. The only film in the fantasy franchise to earn a Rotten label so far was 2024’s Descendants: The Rise of Red, with a 57% critics’ score and a lower 43% audience score. At the time of writing, Descendants: Wicked Wonderland stands above it with a 67% audience score. The new Descendants movie that dethroned Avatar: Fire and Ash follows Red, the daughter of the Queen of Hearts, and Chloe Charming, the daughter of Cinderella, as they face Maddox Hatter, the Mad Hatter’s son, who they accidentally turned evil through time travel.