Happy Ending: Disney Rebounds with 2 Hits

(Update: Corrects the misreported release dates of Toy Story 3 and Alice in Wonderland, both of which come out in 2010, not later this year.)

After two quarters of rough going in which its movie studio has barely earned out, Disney(DIS Quote) appears to be rebounding at the box office on the back of two hits.

First, there was the Pixar animated feature Up, a developing blockbuster that debuted in U.S. theaters May 29 and has so far notched total receipts of $224 million, making it the second highest-grossing film of the year, behind Paramount's Star Trek. (Paramount is owned by Viacom(VIA Quote).)

It's hardly surprising that Up has done so well. Since the film premiered at Cannes earlier in May, Disney and industry pundits had been confident that it would become yet another Pixar money engine. (Disney bought the computer-generated animation studio for about $8 billion in 2006.)

Up's budget has been reported at about $175 million, not including marketing costs, which means that the film has likely closed in on black ink after only three weeks in theaters. If Up does as well as its Pixar predecessor, WALL-E, which cost about the same to produce, it will take in more than half a billion dollars globally.

More recently, over the June 19-21 weekend, Disney's Touchstone unit released The Proposal, a warmed-over, formulaic romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock, which nevertheless brought in a surprising $34 million over those three days -- making it the top grosser in North America, and beating out The Hangover, a sleeper hit released by Time Warner's(TWX Quote) Warner Brothers unit. The strong showing would seem to guarantee at least a decent profit for the Bullock vehicle, which cost a reported $40 million to make.