It Makes No Sense Marvel’s ‘Secret Invasion’ Has A $212 Million Budget

Disney’s Bob Iger said this past week that there had been too many Marvel series on Disney Plus which had “diluted focus and attention” from fans. What he did not say is that he may be tired of Disney spending a truly absurd amount of money on some of these underperforming series, like the currently-airing Secret Invasion.

My Forbes colleague Caroline Reid pointed out that because of UK filming rules, Disney had to disclose how much Secret Invasion cost to make. The answer? $212 million, not just a shocking amount at baseline, but a particularly shocking amount if you’ve seen Secret Invasion, as you have to wonder where exactly it is that money went.

This is very purposefully not a superhero blockbuster. No CGI-laden fights across skyscrapers, no giant battles in space. It’s supposed to be a grounded, Cold War-type spy series where the vast majority of it is usually two people talking in various rooms.

There have been maybe two significant action sequences in Secret Invasion so far, but they’re nothing special. One is a bunch of people running around fleeing explosions in Moscow. Another just happened this week which was a gunfight after a presidential motorcade had been attacked. But it’s mostly just people shooting at each other while hiding behind cars.

With other high-budget shows, as overpriced as they may be, you can at least see the money. Amazon’s billion dollar Rings of Power series is gorgeous, and probably has the highest production value of any series ever, even beyond Jackson’s original movies (though the quality of the show itself is far below them). The same goes for Amazon’s $300 million Citadel, an action series that again, is not very good, but has huge action setpieces, far above what we’re seeing from Secret Invasion here.

It just makes extremely little sense why Secret Invasion should possibly cost this much. The only thing that comes to mind besides what I’ve mentioned is actor salary. There are a lot of big names here. Sam Jackson and Don Cheadle are big stars. They have Emmy-winner Ben Mendelsohn as their lead alien. Game of Thrones lead Emilia Clarke as his daughter. For some reason Oscar-winner Olivia Colman has been in this show for a grand total of ten minutes. So yes, I would imagine all of them are pretty expensive.

Between it all, if it adds up, the point is that the show isn’t good enough and isn’t performing well enough to justify this insane budget. Secret Invasion’s premiere was the lowest of all the Disney Plus MCU series short of Ms. Marvel. It’s half of Moon Knight and close to a third of Loki. As such, it is no surprise this is the “Solo” of MCU D+ shows, causing the higher-ups to rethink their entire strategy here. What a mess.

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