Disney lost about $296.4 million at the box office from two of its Marvel superhero movies in 2023, based on new financial statements.
The cost to make ‘The Marvels’ and ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania’ was about $762.4 million (£609.3 million). After getting $124.9 million (£99.4 million) from government incentives, Disney’s total spending on the movies was $637.5 million. Both movies failed at the box office.
According to Box Office Mojo, the two movies made a total of $682.2 million. Theaters usually keep 50% of the earnings, leaving the rest for the studio. This matches a 2014 study by Stephen Follows, who found that theaters keep about 49%. So, Disney would have made about $341.1 million from ‘The Marvels’ and ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.’
Both movies had famous actors like Oscar-winner Brie Larson in ‘The Marvels’ and Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, and Paul Rudd in ‘Quantumania.’ The earlier movies in these series made over $1 billion, but the new ones were different.
Their sci-fi themes were far from the original stories, which pushed away adult viewers who liked the earlier films. This led to bad reviews and poor performance in theaters.
‘Quantumania’ made $476.1 million, less than its earlier films, and only 17% of what ‘Avengers: Endgame’ earned. ‘The Marvels’ did even worse, making just $206.1 million, the lowest earnings of all 34 Marvel movies.
Disney’s CEO Bob Iger had to address the poor performance and said last year that ‘The Marvels’ was filmed during the pandemic. He said, , “There wasn’t as much supervision on the set, so to speak, where we have executives there, really looking over what’s being done day after day after day.”
Disney doesn’t share specific production costs and didn’t comment on requests for details. Studios usually hide these numbers by grouping expenses together.
However, films made in the UK, like ‘The Marvels’ and ‘Quantumania,’ get up to 25.5% cash back through the UK’s Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit (AVEC). To qualify, at least 10% of the production must be UK-based, leading studios to create separate UK companies for each film. These companies file financial details that reveal costs.
