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.
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.
One thing I like about space fights is you’ll often see them use the 3 dimensions and that they aren’t just upright. But they really are upright to everything almost all of the time otherwise.
It’s not that the physics doesn’t match reality, it’s that the physics doesn’t match THEIR OWN rules.
It’d be like if the Hulk was crushing cars with his steps in one scene, but then calmly sitting in a flimsy plastic lawn chair in the next. It’s discongruent within their OWN rules. It doesn’t match THEIR OWN reality.
It’d be like if Superman is suddenly unable to shrug off bullets. It’s dumb.
Stories do not have to be realistic, but they MUST be congruent in order to be taken seriously. It’s much, MUCH harder to suspend disbelief if there are no rules and the good guy magically wins.
If you say, “but that’s Disney Marvel, though”, then perhaps that has something to do with the waning popularity!?
Sure, but also Pym is dumbing down his explanations for Scott, because he thinks Scott is a moron. The exact functioning of Pym particles isn’t at all clear.
It would be like if Superman could tear his S emblem off his chest and throw it at bad guys like a giant cellophane net. Or if Superman could fly fast enough to spin the Earth backwards and reverse time.
Or like if Hulk could be stopped by some crazy loud directional speakers.
Super powers and weaknesses are, and always have been, entirely plot dependent. Vision can phase because he can phase. The explanation that Vision can control his own density makes zero sense. That could make him float, but it wouldn’t make him fly sideways, and it certainly wouldn’t allow him to pass through solid matter. Air is not very dense, but it doesn’t pass through solid stone. The physics of Starlord and Gamora in space make no sense. Groot makes no sense. Yondu’s arrow makes no sense.
Ant-Man can shrink and punch a dude because he can shrink and punch a dude. The only problem is they tried to explain it like it’s science.
All of these great examples, and we haven’t even mentioned The Flash yet.
Sometimes there’s nothing wrong with enjoying your favourite comic book characters on screen, like watching a live action cartoon. Comics don’t make sense all the time, or cartoons, comic book movies don’t have to either.
If that’s not for you, than to each their own.
I’ll also say I haven’t enjoyed many DC / Marvel movies for awhile but not because they don’t follow their rules. That’s their secret… They have no rules.
Okay I may be wrong there but I don’t know offhand one rule a comic story hasn’t broken at a new point. I also don’t read a ton of them but I know they change their mind a whole lot. Also physics goes out the window when you take into account many comic characters. Sure ant man said this, who says ant man was correct?
There’s a great comic panel where ant man is shrunk down to atomic size with another character. Molecules are floating by. He asks “Hey, how are we breathing anyway if we’re the same size as the molecules”. He answered, “don’t worry about it” and continued the discussion.
For the x-wing banking in space, it could be because that’s how the thrust vectors are lined up. Like maybe it can turn on the y axis (yaw), but it’s much better at turning on the x axis (pitch), so he turns it on the z axis (roll) to line up the x axis with the rotation he really wants to make.
Many space flight sims work this way, though tbf it might be because they are mimicking winged flight characteristics from air-based flight sims.
But I think it does make sense from an engineering and production pov because you can make the yaw mechanism smaller than the pitch mechanism while still being capable of turning in any direction.
Though I gotta wonder how a universe like Star Wars with clearly advanced AIs generally makes them clumsy contraptions and tends to leave flying and aiming ship weapons to humans. It makes sense for the force-sensitive characters, but the millennium falcon should have had a button to press to shoot down all tie fighters in the time it takes the guns to point at where each fighter will be, and the fighters themselves should have been unmanned and shot the falcon from multiple angles before they had a chance to push that button.
It’s not enough to ruin the media IMO, but just amusing to see cool tech in media but also clear signs the writers didn’t realize the full implications of tech like that existing and that nothing exists in a bubble.
The x-wings bank in Star Wars because they were imitating WW2 aircraft
Other games and films that use the same incorrect physics do so because Star Wars did it that way