Though it’ll undoubtedly turn a profit in eight days’ time – barring some unforeseen disaster, of course – Avengers: Infinity War cost a pretty penny to make.
How much, you ask? Well, three days ago we brought you the news that Marvel’s superhero smackdown ran up a bill in excess of $400 million when accounting for marketing and promotion. That figure wasn’t verified at the time of going to press, so it’s small wonder why it drew skepticism from the four corners of the Internet.
Nevertheless, The Wall Street Journal (h/t CBM) has today posted a detailed rundown of Infinity War‘s pre-release buzz, revealing that the Marvel sequel has already sold close to $50 million in advanced ticket sales – for the record, only The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi have sold higher prior to launch.
But things begin to get interesting once the outlet focuses on the film’s budget, which allegedly ballooned to $300M-$400M during production – one high-end estimate suggests Marvel Studios spent $500 million on each installment.
That means that, between them, Infinity War and Avengers 4 will have cost a whopping $1 billion to develop, produce, market and release once the latter reaches theaters in May of 2019.
Of course, as with all financial estimates, we’d advise that you take this updated projection with a grain of salt, as it’s unlikely we’ll know the finer details of Marvel’s immense budget plan until both Avengers sequels are out in the wild.
They also filmed back-to-back, which is a remarkable feat in and of itself when you consider the sheer size of Infinity War‘s character roster. Nevertheless, Joe Russo still believes that Avengers 3 was harder due to the fact that its post-production overlapped with the filming process on Avengers 4.
Make no mistake, this was a Herculean task, and we’ll begin to see the fruits of Marvel’s labor on April 27th.