Disney made an estimated $296.4 million loss at the box office on just two of its Marvel superhero movies in 2023 according to analysis of recently-released financial statements.
They reveal that the cost of making The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania came to a staggering $762.4 million (£609.3 million) before Disney banked $124.9 million (£99.4 million) in government incentives bringing its net spending on the movies down to $637.5 million. They both bombed at the box office.
According to industry analyst Box Office Mojo, the movies grossed a combined $682.2 million with theaters typically retaining 50% of the takings and the remainder going to the studio. This reflects the findings of film industry consultant Stephen Follows who interviewed 1,235 film professionals in 2014 and concluded that, according to studios, theaters keep 49% of the takings on average. It would give Disney just $341.1 million from The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. No expense was spared on them.
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Disney does not publicly discuss how much it spends on specific productions and did not respond to a request for comment. Budgets are usually a closely-guarded secret. This is because studios combine the costs of individual pictures in their overall expenses and their filings don’t itemize how much was spent on each one. Films made in the UK are exceptions and both The Marvels and Quantumania fall into this category.
Studios shoot in the UK to benefit from its Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit (AVEC) which gives them a cash reimbursement of up to 25.5% of the money they spend in the country.
To qualify for the reimbursement, at least 10% of the production costs need to relate to activities in the UK. In order to demonstrate this to the UK government, studios tend to set up a separate production company in the country for each movie they make there.
The companies have to file financial statements which shine a spotlight on their budgets. They reveal everything from the headcount and salaries to the level of reimbursement and the total costs. Studios directly receive the revenue from theater tickets, streaming and Blu-ray sales and carry the costs of marketing as the function of the UK companies is purely making the movies.
I’m sorry, did I just read that DISNEY received $125 Million in government incentives to make a comic book movie?
Wait till you find out the literal billions Georgia (USA) gives away to filmmakers via a tax credit that’s been proven to not be more effective than social programs by a significant margin at generating community wealth…
It’s because trickle down-style policies give more wealth and social power to those at the top while allowing the argument that the economic activity that results from that wealth benefits everyone down the pyramid (which also creates a dependency on more instances of these transfers as businesses grow to accommodate the extra demand).
Social programs do that without giving more wealth or social power to people at the top.
The effectiveness that they care about isn’t the economic benefit or allowing people to become more independent, it’s about funneling money to the rich in the hopes that they will funnel some of it back in a way that won’t look so much like corruption.
The company I currently work at is relocating its HQ to Atlanta GA due to similar incentives. I’m slightly curious just how many millions of dollars in incentives they’re receiving to relocate ~30 employees and hire another 30-60 local employees, because apparently Atlanta outbit Dallas TX on the questionable business incentives
Studios shoot in the UK to benefit from its Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit (AVEC) which gives them a cash reimbursement of up to 25.5% of the money they spend in the country.
It’s not like they were handed a blank check, they spent hundreds of millions more paying people and buying stuff in the UK to get that rebate
“As the CEO, if I pay myself $100 million for making this movie, I will get $25 million of that back from government reimbursement.”
No big budget movie will ever make a profit because they make sure the big wigs get paid the amount the profit would have been. It is intentional.
It goes into more detail in the article about how they qualify for that rebate, and no, that’s not how it works.
You know, this is kind of a feel good story to me. That money didn’t just vanish into the ether. Disney lost that money to the people working on the movies. Not counting the massively overpaid actors and shit, but that “loss” was just regular people taking money from Disney and I like that quite a bit.
Who knew over saturating tired IP would result in a loss of profit?
Less than 333 mil isn’t even close to a billion. I really get tired of click bate headlines.
It also doesn’t take into account how Disney actually uses these movies.
Disney makes the bulk of their pure profit in the theme parks.
They just announced that they were dropping $50billion to upgrade the parks, with an expectation of making that back completely within 2-3 years.
The movies, are seen as giant commercials for new merch and Disney parks.
As long as the movie is seen favorably by the target age group (children who will want to go to Disney world) then it’s seen as a success.
Then scenes from the movie can be used in the theme parks.
As a note, the scenes used in the park, may have been made years before the movie was filmed.
Wow! That’s like a sixth of two billion!
No shit. What a bullshit manipulation of numbers by people thrusting their hate boners. “Almost $300m” would have sufficed.
God they had to dig so deep to get these numbers. Looking up tax records? Like Jesus Christ let it go.
“I lost $100 million dollars making this movie. Coincidentally, I also paid myself $100 million to make this movie.”
Even though this includes the Ant Man film, they put Brie Larson on the thumbnail, they know what they are doing.
They’ve apparently got like $6 billion in cash reserves so they can afford the odd stinker.
Those losses won’t be real losses, because they’ll just pay everyone less on the next movie. They’ll be tax man losses. We haven’t made any money, oh poor us…
Genuinely suspect that the people in charge of the money on these projects are stealing a good chunk of it.
“Stealing”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgYYOUC10aM
Much of the budget is megabucks wages for the stars and director and then enormous amounts on “distribution” aka adverts.
This analysis isn’t acknowledging the important fact that The Marvel’s was dogwater in its best moments and pure cringe at all other times.
I liked the Marvels =(
Meanwhile, I’ve heard such bad things about Quantumania that I haven’t watched it yet lol.
I enjoyed the Marvels but I rate the Captain Marvel highly.
I thought Quantumania was pretty pointless, doubly now Kang has been dropped.
I’m a 40 year old dude and thought it was fun. Not my favourite, but it clearly wasn’t made for me. I feel like it’s the kind of thing that will really connect with young girls and later on it will be looked back on fondly.
Dads, watch it with your daughters. You won’t regret it.
Quantumania was fun too. Could’ve been better, but don’t believe all the hate.
I agree on quantamania, it’s a fun turn your brain off movie. Introduces some cool concepts to the universe and has some interesting visuals. Marvel movies aren’t meant to be your forest gumps, people seem to forget that sometimes.
I liked Quantumania. Sometimes you just want something fun and it delivered.
Hm… Maybe I’ll give it a try sometime then.
That’s kind of how I felt about The Marvels and the other Ant-Man movies. They weren’t mind-blowing, but they were mostly a fun time. Not too long, well paced, pretty light hearts with some creative action scenes that didn’t hit Shang Chi or Winter Soldier heights, but we’re entertaining enough.
The bad guy in Marvels was 100% forgettable. I can’t tell you who it was or what their motives were.
But the main cast had great chemistry.
100%. The villain kinda sucked. The actress was alright but they gave her nothing to work with. Marvel has that problem a lot. They completely wasted Christian Bale in the last Thor movie imo.
I also liked Quantumania. It wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t “Thor 4” level of bad either.
Sounds like most of the marvel movies
I didn’t mind the Marvels. I thought it had problems, and parts were cringy if you’re not into it. But the biggest flaw was the writing. It’s like they had these ideas for set pieces, and then tried to bring it all together as an afterthought. It wasn’t as bad as certain people wanted it to be.
Quantumania was unfinished. It was like they ran out of money and time and just submitted the minimally viable movie. Paul Rudd is always charming, and the actress playing Cassie/Stature is going to be a net plus to the Young Avengers. I think Michelle Pfeiffer was poorly utilized, and of course Kang became a PR problem. But the writing had some high points. The story was engaging, the stakes were real, and the characters all had arcs. The CG was shit, and the Giant Goof schtick is overplayed. Letting go of the physics is a prerequisite for any Superhero movie.
They did poorly because Disney was rushing. They wanted to generate energy and enthusiasm by deliberately releasing each new movie before the last one was available on streaming. But instead of creating fomo, they fostered indifference because the product wasn’t good enough. Nothing post-endgame felt like must-watch content. The tie-ins were half-assed, because the studio clearly did not have faith that they would ever get to wrap up each dangling plot thread.
The Marvels was better than Eternals. Quantumania was better than Wakanda Forever. None of them are great movies, but none are as bad as anti-woke or anti-superhero critics suggest.
That’s completely unfair. There was really good stuff in the first act, the writers played into the tension between the three Marvels quite well. Everything after that was boring and by-the-book, but it wasn’t bad.
A) Ant man is such a stupid movie. “He keeps his same inertia even though he’s tiny” <Grown man proceeds to walk on people with no apparent physical effect>
B) Never trust Hollywood accounting
The physics never make sense. Iron Man should be a pink smoothie in a can. Hulk generates mass from nothing and sheds it back to nothing when he changes. Spiderman should be pulling drywall off the studs. Vibranium makes zero sense, either as a shield or as a suit or really any other time. 90% of the fighting Hawkeye and Black Widow do is absurd and would leave their bones shattered.
Thor is all magic, so that gets a pass, but you can’t throw a hammer and the get dragged behind it, and then change directions midair. Thor is flying because magic, let’s just leave it at that.
And it’s not just the MCU. Superman can’t catch a plane by the nose. Batman can’t launch a grapple hook while he’s falling and prevent his death.
Aragorn can’t toss Gimli that far. Luke’s X-Wing doesn’t bank through air in space. The USS Enterprise wouldn’t always be oriented to be upright with everything. James Bond can’t just recover from all those concussions and venereal diseases without brain damage. Indy can’t ride out a nuclear explosion in a fridge.
You had me until the toss, because Aragorn definitely can toss a dwarf that far, but the rest? All made up.
Superhero movies suck massive ass.
Endgame, ragnarok, one iron man, one of spider-mans. Dr. strange. The raimi trilogy. The animated spider-man movies. Nolan’s batman? Matt Reeve’s Batman? Watchmen too probably.
I think there are some good rewatchable action movies in there. Oh an Loki. Loki was good. Harry Potter sort of stuff, but comic books.
I thought Ragnarok and Endgame were extremely mid tbh. Infinity War was great, but I think Endgame was a huge letdown. Agreed with Dark Knight (I don’t think that highly of Dark Knight Rises), Spider-Verse, and the Raimi trilogy, though, and Dr. Strange is a solid 7/10 for me; definitely doesn’t suck massive ass. I’d add Incredibles to that too. I’ve heard nothing but great things about the latest TMNT movie.
Infinity War, Wandavision, first Ant-Man is solid, Guardians of the Galaxy, Winter Soldier, Unbreakable … does Chronicle count?
I think Shang Chi was good up until the MCU ending up until the third-act it felt like a completely different type of film which is what I was happy about
Chronicle could count. But then you’re inviting in things like Brightburn, maybe even Carrie or other super-power adjacent stories? Chronicle makes me sad for some reason. Totally forgot about Guardians. Loved the OST from those movies.
Ragnarok is ass, all the others are valid. My opinion 🫡
Maybe I have a soft spot for Ragnarok. I like Thor and Hemsworth and how it went in a totally different direction was refreshing since the previous Thor was meh. I was in the mood for comedy and brighter colours. Plus the intro scene hooked me. Haven’t watched any of these movies for a few years though.
I can see why people like it. It’s just not for me.
this only accounts for box office take. when you add in streaming, tv and other broadcast rights, home video, merchandising. they won’t be ‘losing money’ on these two ‘bombs’.
Yeah when the ant man Halloween costume numbers come in at the end of the month I’m sure they’ll be in the black.
