Eyebrows were raised when a profile on The Marvels director Nia DaCosta listed the budget of her incoming Marvel Cinematic Universe sequel at a relatively thrifty $130 million, which seemed suspiciously low.
After all, the comic book franchise’s features tend to hew a lot closer to the $200 million ballpark these days, and the knives were being sharpened in anticipation by trolls after the follow-up to the movie they despise so much had purportedly tied with Ant-Man as the least expensive MCU blockbuster ever made.
Of course, that proved to be significantly wide of the mark when Disney’s own financial filings revealed it had spent near enough $220 million on The Marvels, but it would have been a lot more were it not for some mighty generous tax breaks from the United Kingdom’s government.
In fact, had The Marvels decided to shoot elsewhere, then the total production costs of $274.8 million would have enshrined it as the single costliest non-Avengers entry in Marvel Studios history. Endgame, Infinity War, and Age of Ultron are the three heftiest investments ever made by Kevin Feige’s outfit for reasons that should be patently obvious, and it’s not surprising that the $250 million Captain America: Civil War is in fourth given that it was largely sold and marketed on the back of its status as Avengers 2.5.
Had The Marvels not received that extensive subsidy, though, then it would reign supreme as the most expensive project in the 15-year history of cinema’s most lucrative property that didn’t involve an insane amount of superheroes banding together (with all of their combined salaries) to stave off a threat designated important enough to have them assemble.
