Word has it that Marvel is keeping the purse strings tight on the production of The Avengers, and even with the talent list they are not spending any more than Sony spent on the first Spider-Man
According to Bleeding Cool, “certain people” are saying that Marvel is trying to keep a very tight budget on the production of The Avengers; so low in fact that it’s being compared to what Sony invested in making the first Spider-Man back in 2002. Sony spent just under $140 million on Spider-Man and the same goes for what Marvel spent shooting the first Iron Man.
That $140million is a nice magic number for a budget, but a lot lower than what I expected.
But honestly, with films like District 13 looking so good, why is it costing this much to make movies? Sounds like they are just being responsible. You don’t make a profit by throwing money away and hoping it comes back.
People are saying with Disney now backing the team they have all the money they need, but its still smart to watch your pennies. And frankly, something this big doesn’t really need a huge marketing campaign.
They will have two Iron Man films, Thor, and Captain America as “commercials” leading up to this. Add a handful of commercials and get the net to do the rest.
Lowering the cost of the film and marketing will just mean more profit when this becomes the biggest Comic book movie of all time.
Have to wait to see how Thor (meh) and Captain America (meh) do before pronouncing anything a sure hit…
I think $300m domestic will be fairly easy though.
I don’t think Avengers is going to be the biggest Superhero movie of all time. That honor will still belong to the Dark Knight. Although I love Thor and Captain America, I don’t believe either will translate well to the screen and pull in the average movie going public. Much like the Watchmen, mostly fan boy’s (like me) will go see these. Each will bring in around 150 million in the domestic market if they are lucky. When the Avengers finally arrive the public will still be unaware of the product and so there will be no huge lines to see it. I don’t think Marvel did a good job cross promoting these films in either one of the Iron Man or Hulk movies. Placing key scenes that tie the movies together after the credits is a sure fire way for most of the public to miss these plot points. Nick Fury’s appearence in Iron Man 2 almost made no sense due to this and I’m sure many people were saying,”Who the hell is this guy and what the hell is he talking about?” If they noticed it at all. Marvel would have done better if they made these plot points crucial to the stories of Iron Man and the Hulk and left them as cliff hangers for people to chew on for a few years till Captain America or Thor arrived.They never mentioned the Super Soldier program or Captain America in either movie. I think Thor and Captain America will be hard sells and the Avengers even more so after the Cap and Thor movies will have left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Love these character’s but I have a real bad feeling about both movies.
Watching their pennies is a smart move, hopefully the movie doesn’t suffers from it. Personally I think it won’t.
Hell, maybe the price of the theatre tickets will decrease….Probably not.
I don’t know if we can really consider $140 million a “tight” budget. It’s more like the budget just isn’t “insane.” I, for one, also think this movie is slightly more risky than, say, Batman 3 — there’s a fairly decent chance a movie like this could flop, even if it is good, particularly if Thor and Captain America don’t do particularly well — and is anyone really banking on those two doing particularly well? I’m not.
Finally, I think movies with $200 million + budgets have a really, really mixed track record. Who thinks the budget for Alice in Wonderland, for example, couldn’t have been cut in half and still have been a *better* movie than it was? Sometimes, I think having a means to edit the ‘complete’ vision of the director can be a good thing — a vast budget has, in some cases, been at least a contributing factor to movies being ruined. I’d put Alice in Wonderland in that category, as well as the Star Wars prequels, as well as numerous other movies. And I wish good action flicks like Taken and The Town would prove that you don’t need the vast budgets and huge special effects to make good, exciting and even action-packed movies. Part of me thinks this news of Marvel “only” giving Avengers a $140 million budget is made with these things in mind.
Thanks for answering my question Rodney. I do think your right that as long as they do it right it will turn out sweet. I also agree with you 420band as much as I liked IM2 they better not do that nighttime shit with the avengers. That was one of the things about IM2 that drive me crazy.
Yeah right! even on Blu-Ray I feel like I got to squint my eyes during those action scenes (2 out of 3!) Bollucks!
Perhaps Disney feels that there’s no need for promoting Avengers, thus lowering the budget to 140 million. The 140 million will be devoted to special effects and production costs instead.
Better not Short Change us on the action with alot of Night scenes (IM2)
this deserves the “Blow the Wad” treatment.
Lets see.
I really dont need a McDonalds tie-in either, Just the money on screen thanks
Even with Disney supposedly backing it? Wow.
I like how you broke it down because I was initially scared when I read this post. I do think they can skimp on marketing but at the same time to create a world that needs defending from a group as large as the avengers all i see is $$$$$. I hope they can pull it off but Joss is good at working with low tech and still making magic.
Rodney do you think with this budget that they will have to sacrafice some action scenes that they might have wanted to do. I remember that concept art for the helicarrier that came out a couple weeks ago and it would seem that is going to cost a pretty penny to do.
Honestly I dont see much that they cant do with CG now. As long as it is done well, they could film this in my living room and a computer can put them on the bridge of a super high tech flying aircraft carrier.