A new report claims that the combined production costs for Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame were nearly double than what was initially reported.
Forbes’ Caroline Reid reports that newly filed British returns for The Walt Disney Company’s codenamed Assembled Productions III, which was for both Infinity War and Endgame, shows the company spent $1.3 billion on both films’ productions instead of the previously reported combined $700 million.
Given these new costs it calls into question the return on investment both of those films brought The Walt Disney Company, a question that YouTuber Valliant Renegade brought up in his coverage of the new Forbes reports.
The YouTuber initially looked at the box office grosses for both films and broke them down via their domestic, international, and Chinese box offices. He also calculated their overall returns to the studio.
Valliant Renegade used domestic and international box office information from AMC Theaters that shows that studios take 55% of the domestic and 43% of the international. He then used a rough estimate of a 25% take from China.
Thus given Avengers: Infinity War had a domestic box office of $678.8 million, a $1 billion international box office, and $359.5 million in China, he revealed that Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company took $373.3 million domestically, $434.3 million internationally, and $89.8 million from China. That comes to a total of $897.5 million.
With Avengers: Endgame, the film grossed $858.3 million domestically, $1.3 billion internationally, and $629.1 million in China. That means Disney took home $472.1 million domestically, $559.6 million internationally, and $157.2 million in China for a total around $1.2 billion.
Combined Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame returned around $2.1 billion.
Next, Valliant Renegade factored in the marketing costs for both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame and estimated it likely cost around $500 million for both films.
He explained, “As we’ve seen from sources in the past, places like Deadline magazine, a total figure combined for these two movies for global prints and ads or global marketing, easily around $500 million or half a billion of total spend. And to be clear that is in addition to the actual production costs of the movies.”
“That means The Walt Disney Company spent in total for Infinity War and Endgame from Marvel Studios between production and marketing somewhere close to $1.8 billion,” he asserted. “Somebody call the men in the little white coats because I think they’ve gone insane.”
From there, he added the newly reported production costs to the marketing estimate and came up with $1.8 billion. He then took that number and subtracted it from their take of the box office hauls.
“That means The Walt Disney Company would have only made about $300 million on both of those two movies combined,” he said.
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However, he does note that the company did indeed receive a number of tax credits from the British government and likely received a number from various states in the United States where they filmed.
“Now, again, there were, of course, some film tax credits. And let’s say that maybe they brought in a combined total between the U.S. markets and the UK markets and anywhere else they would have filmed. Maybe as much as $200 million in tax credits. That would add another $200 million to the pot. Maybe making the total haul for Disney or profit of around $500 million. But still that seems like a very small amount considering a $4.8 billion global box office.”
While he notes the box office profitability is less than what was initially expected due to the enormous costs, Valliant Renegade did reveal that at the time The Walt Disney Company did have lucrative deals with companies like Netflix where they licensed their films to bring in extra revenue.
He also notes that the movies also sold in the hundreds of millions in Blu-ray and DVD sales not to mention all of the merchandising deals the films had.
Nevertheless, at the end of the video, Valliant Renegade excoriates Marvel Studios and The Walt Disney Company for the massive production costs and driving down the profitability of the film.
“They have got these costs that are out of control and that has a lot to do with poor planning, lots of reshoots, tons of last minute post-production and VFX work that Disney is constantly asking post-production art houses to complete at the last minute. It’s also the reason that Disney and particularly Marvel Studios have developed such a bad reputation over the years that people don’t want to work with them,” he stated.
What do you make of this new report that both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame saw production costs balloon to a combined $1.3 billion?
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