The Marvels | November 10, 2023 | Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter

[Eric Lasagna]

Moderation

 

@Willowra @Megajohn01 Enough. Continue fighting and you will see a threadban.

[Firepower]

2 hours ago, Bob Train said:

Vanity Fair reports budget is $130m, lowest budget ever for MCU after adjusting for inflation. Unadjusted, it's #2 lowest behind Ant-Man.

That number is as accurate as me being John Travolta.

[PlatnumRoyce]

1 hour ago, Veclozy said:

Deadline estimates for Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom including residuals and participations: $395M

Forbes estimates for Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom including residuals and participations: $516M

Yeah, but that also begs the question as to if Universal's been lowballing their public JW series budgets in trades (and deadline uses those in their estimates). Those documents really should raise your implied "true JW2/3 budget" especially as you'd have assumed they were made for 200M without additional reporting. Deadline's estimates about post-theatrical revenue could also be off in a way that increases or decreases talent payments by tens of millions. We do know for a fact that trades lowball budgets on average. 

 

There's a real divergence between deadline and UK tax documents on this stuff but it's not a $120M divergence from same set of facts. How well have deadline's revenue estimates held up? 

Again, I'm not claiming to be an expert on any of this stuff. Just look at what publicly available government information explicitly says these numbers do and do not mean. You need to be careful comparing unlike sources but that's not the same as dismissing the less publicly accessible one when it's a conceptually stronger source. 

https://britishfilmcommission.org.uk/plan-your-production/tax-reliefs/

Similarly, I pulled Fallen Kingdom's report

 

and looked at the "year ending august 31st 2018" report. That combined 2017/2018 spend comes out to 318M USD (using average yearly exchange rate, I guess you said above it was closer to 250M if you pulled precise date exchange rates?). That's a well timed report because it comes out right after the theatrical release but before post-theatrical revenue comes in. If that was the tax credit headline instead of $500M, people would think it sounded more conceptually plausible., 

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09966806/filing-history

 

I think the simplest answer is simply that JW sequels got aggressive with lying about costs while a generic hollywood film with exact same real spend gives you a 200 or 250M announced budget. The best way to test that would be to compare various big budget single film tax vehicle budgets against each other. Even if you don't find agreement on specific numbers, that should help tell relative budget size of Captain Marvel v. JW 2

Edited September 19, 2023 by PlatnumRoyce

[PlatnumRoyce]

35 minutes ago, Firepower said:

That number is as accurate as me being John Travolta.

"VF goofed by grabbing 2021 tax credit spend as the film's budget" seems to be what obviously happened. Probably reported at 200M in a month or two,.

[SpiderByte]

Either way a lower budget means a higher profit margin which means Ms Marvel season 2 is much more likely, so yay me

[Liiviig 1998]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinereid/2023/04/11/disneys-bill-for-the-marvels-came-to-130-million-two-years-ago/?sh=79ea102a491f

 

According to an article  published by Forbes . Not saying it's accurate either but once again I think we should wait for other trades esp deadline to weigh in.  But still think it's gonna come in higher than 130m.

 

It says that was for just 2 months of shooting.

 

 

[dudalb]

I think every studio is going to have to cut costs and are going to have to have smaller budgets. 

But Disney has to do this more then most;  It does seem to c ost more to make a movie at Disney then other studios. I have no doubt  Disney has gotten careless and sloppy in how they spend money.

[Squire]

1 hour ago, Liiviig 1998 said:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinereid/2023/04/11/disneys-bill-for-the-marvels-came-to-130-million-two-years-ago/?sh=79ea102a491f

 

According to an article  published by Forbes . Not saying it's accurate either but once again I think we should wait for other trades esp deadline to weigh in.  But still think it's gonna come in higher than 130m.

 

It says that was for just 2 months of shooting.

 

 

$130M for 2 months of filming makes a lot more sense than the whole movie costing that amount. Considering the last few MCU movies have all been in the $200 to $250M range, it makes more sense that Marvels budget is similar. 

[TheFlatLannister]

$130M budget would be such a win for the Marvels. There is no way this goes below breakeven ~$300M...so it should make at least $100m+ in profits 

[Squire]

12 hours ago, TheFlatLannister said:

$130M budget would be such a win for the Marvels. There is no way this goes below breakeven ~$300M...so it should make at least $100m+ in profits 

Vanity Fair  already updated its article to remove the $130M number, which they likely got from the Forbes article that said just the 2 initial months of production cost $130M. Likely the budget will be similar to recent MCU films ($200-250M). 

Edited September 20, 2023 by Squire

[Porthos]

Gee... It's almost as if the term "Hollywood Accounting" is a decades old cliche or sumthin'.

 

====

 

Look, none of us, and I do mean NONE. OF. US know how much more or less expensive The Marvels is relative to other movies or projects.

 

We don't.  We absolutely do not.  No, not even then.  Or then or then or then for that matter. 

 

Trying to piece together contradictory info from wildly different sources is a, not to put too fine point on it, fool's errand.  Even bringing in official tax documents with various countries/governments only goes so far.

 

It being utter folly to actually figure out if something was "really" profitable or not is one of the main reasons why the informal "2x/2.5x of reported budgets in the Trades" rule of thumb came about in the first place!  IMO, even that breaks down for super cheap or super expensive (or high grossing for that matter) films.  That's why it's a rule of thumb that is supposed to be a general observation and not like, I don't know, a fundamental law of physics.

Due to it being a rule of thumb, it's often better to instead pay attention to what studios actually do and how they react to a film's box office run.  That is a pretty decent gauge (though still only a gauge as there can be plenty of other factors going on) on how happy they are with how something has done. 

Edited September 20, 2023 by Porthos

[Liiviig 1998]

2 minutes ago, Porthos said:

Gee... It's almost as if the term "Hollywood Accounting" is a decades old cliche or sumthin'.

 

====

 

Look, none of us, and I do mean NONE. OF. US know how much more or less expensive The Marvels is relative to other movies or projects.

 

We don't.  We absolutely do not.  No, not even then.  Or then or then or then for that matter. 

 

Trying to piece together contradictory info from wildly different sources is a, not to put too fine point on it, fool's errand.  Even bringing in official tax documents with various countries/governments only goes so far.

 

It being utter folly to actually figure out if something was "really" profitable or not is one of the main reasons why the informal "2x/2.5x of reported budgets in the Trades" rule of thumb came about in the first place!  IMO, even that breaks down for super cheap or super expensive (or high grossing for that matter) films.  That's why it's a rule of thumb that is supposed to be a general observation and not like, I don't know, a fundamental law of physics.

Due to it being a rule of thumb, it's often better to instead pay attention to what studios actually do and how they react to a film's box office run.  That is a pretty decent gauge (though still only a gauge as there can be plenty of other factors going on) on how happy they are with how something has done. 

I can agree  it's tough to ever know budgets. But also think seeing how a studio reacts to box office run ain't a sufficient gauge either. Studios just hide alot of financial  information.

 

Original CM had 152m budget which comes higher adjusted

 

Sequel coming  less . Just don't buy that. Started shooting in 2021 and yeah covid was winding down but just about every Disney budget ballooned due to covid related restraint s and this one doesn't.

 

 

[Liiviig 1998]

2 hours ago, Squire said:

Variety already updated its article to remove the $130M number, which they likely got from the Forbes article that said just the 2 initial months of production cost $130M. Likely the budget will be similar to recent MCU films ($200-250M). 

Link to the article?

[Porthos]

4 minutes ago, Liiviig 1998 said:

I can agree  it's tough to ever know budgets. But also think seeing how a studio reacts to box office run ain't a sufficient gauge either. Studios just hide alot of financial  information.

 

I meant more along the lines of "do more with the characters/property"/"trumpet up achievements in the press vs forgetting it existed" and similar sorts of things.  But even then it's just a vibes thing which has lots of other factors at play.

 

[Squire]

11 minutes ago, Liiviig 1998 said:

Link to the article?

Was posted by someone else earlier, but it’s this one:

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/09/nia-dacosta-on-navigating-the-blockbuster-machine

 

Key section:

 

“DaCosta is also still grappling with the breakthroughs she’s made, including the fact that The Marvels is the highest-budgeted film ever helmed by a Black woman. (DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time previously held that title with $100 million.)”

[Liiviig 1998]

1 hour ago, Squire said:

Was posted by someone else earlier, but it’s this one:

 

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/09/nia-dacosta-on-navigating-the-blockbuster-machine

 

Key section:

 

“DaCosta is also still grappling with the breakthroughs she’s made, including the fact that The Marvels is the highest-budgeted film ever helmed by a Black woman. (DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time previously held that title with $100 million.)”

Ok thanks yeah definitely removed the 130m number.  But the article is vanity fair not variety . So edit that in your post.

[Hatebox]

I’d be sincerely impressed if the budget was 130. It obviously isn’t, but talk

about a step in the right direction. 

[eddyxx]

The budget is probably 200m just like all the last 15 Disney projects(including tv shows)!

[eddyxx]

On 9/18/2023 at 10:59 PM, SpiderByte said:

Idk why people act like every movie has been written by a Rick and Morty veteran and not... literally one? At least that I can find

Quantamania and Dr strange 3 as far as I know.

[TMP]

This movie looks like it costs $5 and a dream so the $130m might be an overshoot tbh