Disney+ MCU: Agatha: Coven of Chaos | Kathryn Hahn will return

[Daxtreme]

It's not moving fast but it's a fun show so far

[LVB]

The gays keep winning.

[LVB]

 

[dudalb]

On 10/2/2024 at 6:43 PM, Daxtreme said:

It's not moving fast but it's a fun show so far

ANd that is all the matters, isn't it?

 

[dudalb]

If she does not already have one, Kathryne Hahn is going to get a long term contract form Marvel. I suspect she will show up in a number of the movies. We all know some kind of encounter between her and Dr Strange is a given.

[Spidey Freak]

On 10/1/2024 at 6:30 PM, PlatnumRoyce said:

The 40M number for Echo appears to come from Forbes blogger Paul Tassi which is fine but it's not backstopped by anything. I haven't seen Echo but does that make conceptual sense considering what the pre-meddling budget would have been? Something like 40M apparently seems possible-ish for Agatha (I don't have a great sense of this) but I think the Echo budget is being used as too strong of an anchor given Disney's incentives to downplay costs. 

 

Agatha is very obviously not as expensive as Echo though. It has a very limited cast and the entire show seems to be filmed at one primary set. Its horror leanings and tropes (small group of people stuck at a desolate location) are coming in handy to keep the budget low.

[Spidey Freak]

54 minutes ago, dudalb said:

If she does not already have one, Kathryne Hahn is going to get a long term contract form Marvel. I suspect she will show up in a number of the movies. We all know some kind of encounter between her and Dr Strange is a given.

 

Agatha Harkness was originally a Fantastic Four character (the nanny of Reed and Sue's son Franklin) before they decided to pair her up with Wanda. Hahn would be a great addition to the MCU F4 ensemble.

[PlatnumRoyce]

  

8 hours ago, Spidey Freak said:

Agatha is very obviously not as expensive as Echo though. It has a very limited cast and the entire show seems to be filmed at one primary set. Its horror leanings and tropes (small group of people stuck at a desolate location) are coming in handy to keep the budget low.

Sure, that seems very plausible and I'm inclined to believe this sort of explicit "least expensive" claim when made. However, I think this likely puts pressure on the earlier Echo claim and it's at least worth flagging that this is a difference source than the one for that claim.  For an example of why I'm a bit skeptical of Echo's budget (besides the most obvious reason - Disney's awful record at budgeting especially on tv shows/films with troubled productions), we can look at NJ and see that Echo spent >6M on the show's pilot for "New Jersey-as-New-York" scenes (before a 2M tax credit). Pilots often have extra costs but that's 10% of the alleged budget. 

For Agatha to be "significantly below" Echo-at-40M, that's at bare minimum 35M (and I really read it as a more significant implied gap that this). 35/9 = 3.88M/episode. Comparing this to a random network tv show I can find tax credit data for: "God Friended me season 2" spent 83M in New York to create 22 episodes or 3.77M pre-tax credit (2.86M w/ tax credit [assuming no spending takes place outside of New York]).  Does that make conceptual sense? To me it just does not (but see caveats above). I haven't seen the most recent episode of Agatha but if a good chunk of the season is akin to episode 2 the point you're making becomes pretty compelling. 

 

Note, however, there's a way to reconcile these two numbers. per episode cost. 40/5 [Echo] = 8M. So if we assume Echo's budget is correct, you could slash that show's per episode budget by 25% and still end up at 55M and that would, I believe, be completely consistent with the budget claims for Agatha. But this is all just scratch paper math. 

Edited 16 hours ago by PlatnumRoyce

[ZeroHour]

1 hour ago, PlatnumRoyce said:

  

Sure, that seems very plausible and I'm inclined to believe this sort of explicit "least expensive" claim when made. However, I think this likely puts pressure on the earlier Echo claim and it's at least worth flagging that this is a difference source than the one for that claim.  For an example of why I'm a bit skeptical of Echo's budget (besides the most obvious reason - Disney's awful record at budgeting especially on tv shows/films with troubled productions), we can look at NJ and see that Echo spent >6M on the show's pilot for "New Jersey-as-New-York" scenes (before a 2M tax credit). Pilots often have extra costs but that's 10% of the alleged budget. 

For Agatha to be "significantly below" Echo-at-40M, that's at bare minimum 35M (and I really read it as a more significant implied gap that this). 35/9 = 3.88M/episode. Comparing this to a random network tv show I can find tax credit data for: "God Friended me season 2" spent 83M in New York to create 22 episodes or 3.77M pre-tax credit (2.86M w/ tax credit [assuming no spending takes place outside of New York]).  Does that make conceptual sense? To me it just does not (but see caveats above). I haven't seen the most recent episode of Agatha but if a good chunk of the season is akin to episode 2 the point you're making becomes pretty compelling. 

 

Note, however, there's a way to reconcile these two numbers. per episode cost. 40/5 [Echo] = 8M. So if we assume Echo's budget is correct, you could slash that show's per episode budget by 25% and still end up at 55M and that would, I believe, be completely consistent with the budget claims for Agatha. But this is all just scratch paper math. 

I agree that there's some degree of telephone going on. Winderbaum doesn't comment on Echo's budget for this piece so Variety is presumably pulling that from the same previous reporting that everyone else is pulling that figure from. What we get from him is that this is their cheapest show (whether in total or per episode is not necessarily clear) and that the budget is under 9 figures. That said the show appears to be one large set (the witches' road) and then one new house set each week and no major movie stars with very little on location filming (some of the stuff in the first two episodes, maybe some more stuff toward the end), so it makes sense that we're back in the land of TV-sized budgets.

 

The fact that it's still pulling in something akin to "Marvel-sized" ratings is probably a good sign for this new approach to their TV projects.

[dudalb]

19 hours ago, Spidey Freak said:

 

Agatha Harkness was originally a Fantastic Four character (the nanny of Reed and Sue's son Franklin) before they decided to pair her up with Wanda. Hahn would be a great addition to the MCU F4 ensemble.

I pointed the out when Wandavision came out.

Me, I am looking forward to the inevitable encounter with Dr.Strange.