Avengers: Doomsday Budget is Shaping Up to be Massive
The Avengers don’t come cheap. As Marvel gears up for what it hopes will be the two movies that save it from implosion, Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars, news is coming that the films will be the costliest the studio has ever produced. If you’re unaware, movie productions often film in the UK because of a law that gives the studio up to a 25.5% rebate provided they spend at least 10% of their production costs filming there; the catch is that they have to file tax reports with the government, and those reports are made public, meaning they can’t fudge the numbers as much as they’re used to doing. With that in mind, Forbes has revealed the findings of recent tax filings in the UK, which show that Marvel and Disney spent $8 million in pre-production on Avengers: Doomsday as of one month before the Comic-Con announcement of Robert Donwey Jr. and the Russo Brothers’ return to the MCU, which was last July. To put this number into perspective, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania spent $2.5 million during a similar time frame, ten months before the start of production, as opposed to nine months for Doomsday.
Let’s do some math. (I know, fun, but bear with me for a minute.) Quantumania had a budget of $388.4 before their UK rebate. $2.5 million is about .6444% of that total. Using that formula, $8 million is .6444% of about $1.2 billion – almost as much as the budget of Infinity War and Endgame combined, according to Forbes. Ho. Lee. Shit. Now, obviously, there are some variables it’s impossible to account for, like reshoots, which Doomsday may have fewer of than Quantumania did – and good God, they’d better keep their damn reshoots to a minimum if these are the numbers they’re spending. As for the time discrepancy – 10 months for Quantumania vs. 9 months for Doomsday – Forbes says that Quantumania averaged $251,165 per month, while Doomsday averages $531,919, more than double. But it’s hard to imagine what they spent this amount of money on; I would assume it’s things like location scouting, buying materials, and stuff like that, which could be more for this film than for Quantumania, which took place almost entirely in the digitally-rendered Quantum Realm. It could also include the salaries of Destin Daniel Cretton, who was set to direct, and Jeff Loveness and Michael Waldron, who were to write the film when it was called The Kang Dynasty. Cretton appears to have been moved to Spider-Man 4, so they may not have had to pay him for this, but Loveness and Waldron had both worked on the script, so even though they were replaced, they’d have to have been paid something. I don’t think that quite comes to $8 million, though. And now, they’ve got the $80 million they’re giving to the Russos, plus Robert Downey Jr.’s even more massive payday, though that’s for Secret Wars, too.
Whatever Disney and Marvel have been spending money on, Doomsday and Secret Wars are going to be extremely expensive movies to make, certainly more than Infinity War and Endgame. However, I don’t think Doomsday will end up costing over $1 billion on its own; that’s too insane for cash-strapped Disney right now. They’ll almost certainly save money somewhere, and my best guess is that it’ll be in keeping the reshoots to the absolute minimum. That means not filming the entire movie two or three times like Captain America: Brave New World. On that score, having a cast of thousands may actually help them, since it’d be almost impossible to get them all back for extensive reshoots. It also helps that they’re hiring proven talents to write and direct this one instead of promoting the people who screwed up their Disney+ shows. I know this would fall on deaf ears even if anyone at Marvel were reading this, especially after that leaked concept art, but I’d also advise scrapping all the boring, useless, unpopular eighth-stringers they’ve populated the post-Endgame MCU with. Why pay people who are only going to drag your movie down or, at best, add nothing? Star-Lord hanging out with Wong or Vision? Cool. Star-Lord hanging out with Ms. Marvel, Kate Bishop, and Ant-Man’s daughter? Waste of time that could be spent on people the audience actually likes. It’s the same with that image of the Hulk with She-Hulk and Skaar; drop the two lame-os and have Hulk team up with Thor or Thing or even Spider-Man. Who cares if these characters were “set up,” to the degree that anything Marvel’s done recently can be called “storytelling”? You set up the Leader in 2008 and didn’t pay him off (such as you did) until a month ago. You’ll save yourself some dough, and you’ll probably make more when you assure moviegoers they won’t have to sit through endless scenes with the also-rans.
I understand there’s some give-and-take here. An Avengers movie can’t be cheap, and Marvel has to spend money if it wants to make money. But it’s increasingly looking like people are done with Marvel, and I don’t see Doomsday or Secret Wars doing Infinity War’s numbers, let alone Endgame’s. They need to rein these behemoths in as much as possible, which is easier said than done when one actor is getting a tenth of the budget of your last two Avengers films. If they need to bring back the big guns – and they desperately do – let these be their movies and keep the guys who haven’t earned a spot in the big leagues in their solo films or on TV. Maybe then you’ll actually give the audience you’ve spent half a decade spurning the experience they deserve.
Let us know what you think of the Avengers: Doomsday budget in the comments!
***
Get a META PC today; use code “199” to save on all purchases!
If you want to know what kind of political leanings movies have or just talk about cinema, check out the movie ratings community Criticless.
Get Your Geeks + Gamers merch here!
