When it comes to Marvel movies, the issue of production budgets has proven to be an increasingly hot-button topic. The latest example of this debate can be found in reports surfacing for the forthcoming The Marvels, whose budget was recently in dispute.
While it’s basically considered par for the course for an Avengers movie to cost north of $300 million nowadays, it’s also now a standard for those films to gain over a billion dollars at the worldwide box office. As a result, no one really bats an eyelash at the hefty expense for the MCU’s flagship crossover franchise.
However, with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, for instance, people have questioned its $200 million budget since it barely managed to eke out a profit at the worldwide box office and failed to impress critics or audiences. In other cases, the scrutiny comes from asking whether a Marvel movie’s budget is too low.
The highs and lows of The Marvels‘ budget saga
With The Marvels, it was apparently misreported by Vanity Fair that the film would only have a budget of $130 million, making it $45 million lower than the first film in the franchise, Captain Marvel. This led to speculation that Disney was perhaps divesting in the series for whatever reason. However, it turned out the budget for The Marvels was much higher. As Disney later clarified (as reported by Forbes), the cost of The Marvels was actually north of $270 million but ended up netting $220 million, thanks to a U.K. tax incentive.
The Marvels‘ true budget makes a lot more sense to us, considering MCU sequels generally get more money funneled to them than the first installment. Even still, the entire discussion had us curious about looking at the entire list of Marvel movie budgets and ranking them from most to least expensive — so that’s exactly what we did, thanks to information from The Numbers.
For the purposes of our list, we are excluding The Marvels and any other MCU film that has yet to be released in theaters since the final number for those budgets could change. Bear in mind, that when multiple movies are listed as having the same budgets, we’ve considered that to be a tie for that entry in the list. With that said, here’s the entire breakdown:
- $400 million – Avengers: Endgame (2019)
- $365 million – Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
- $300 million – Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
- $250 million – Captain America: Civil War (2016); Thor: Love and Thunder (2022); Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022); Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)
- $225 million – The Avengers (2012)
- $200 million – Iron Man 3 (2013); Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017); Black Panther (2018); Black Widow (2021); Eternals (2021); Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021); Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022); Ant-Man and the Qasp: Quantumania (2023)
- $186 million – Iron Man (2008)
- $180 million – Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
- $175 million – Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017); Captain Marvel (2019)
- $170 million – Iron Man 2 (2010); Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014); Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
- $165 million – Doctor Strange (2016)
- $160 million – Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)
- $150 million – Thor (2011); Thor: The Dark World (2013); Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
- $140 million – Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
- $137.5 million – The Incredible Hulk (2008)
- $130 million – Ant-Man (2015); Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
How will forthcoming MCU movies like The Marvels and next year’s Deadpool 3 ultimately shake out on this list after they release? Only time will tell. However, we have a feeling the ongoing writers’ and actors’ strikes may have an inflating impact on some of these projects in a comparable manner to the COVID-19 pandemic. With no crystal ball in site, however, we are left to only speculate.
For now, you can check out The Marvels in theaters on November 10 to decide for yourself if it lives up to that $270 million or so production value.
