The Marvel Show Which Cost Just $30 Million To Make

Marvel is famous for big budget movies, but one of its recent productions cost just $30 million (Photo by Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Disney’s Marvel Studios division has become famous for having some of the biggest budgets in Hollywood so when it comes to light that one of its projects cost just $30.4 million it seems like a dream ticket.

There’s a catch of course as the production is an animated instalment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). It makes the cartoon far from bargain basement and highlights how expensive movies, not just ones made by Disney, have become when the prospect of one which cost ‘just’ $30.4 million seems too good to be true. Disney agrees.

In February 2023 the studio’s chief executive Bob Iger announced that it needed to “reduce costs on everything that we make because, while we’re extremely proud of what’s on the screen, it’s gotten to a point where it’s extraordinarily expensive.”

It was no exaggeration as during the same month Marvel released Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania which cost a cool $388.4 million as this author revealed. Nine months later the studio debuted The Marvels which cost $387.3 million but grossed just $206.1 million.

When The Marvels was released, Iger explained that the movie was made during the pandemic when the caliber of Disney’s film-making suffered from having less supervision on set whilst costs surged because of “the need to deliver a certain level of spectacle,” according to Marvel boss Kevin Feige.

Feige recently told Variety that Marvel’s latest movies “have been upwards of a third cheaper than they were two years before that” though they aren’t on the same level as its latest animated production. They aren’t just cheaper than their bigger brothers on the silver screen, they have also been better received by fans.

Marvel Studios’ animation division kicked off in 2021 with What If…? which piggybacked on the popularity of the MCU as it presented alternate versions of key moments from the movies. It cast a powerful spell.

The series features voice acting from many of the MCU’s leading lights and has been praised for its inventive approach as well as its anime-inspired appearance. Audiences and critics rated it around 90% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and it was so successful that it spawned a second series which premiered in December 2023.

That was followed by X-Men ’97 which debuted on the Disney+ streaming platform last year. Sequel to a show which was originally broadcast on network television 30 years earlier, it charts the exploits of the titular mutant super hero group.

Smart storylines as well as respect for the source material and a hefty dose of nostalgia have helped the show to a staggering 99% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes with the audience rating only eight percentage points lower.

Marvel’s animation slate hit top gear this year, starting in January with Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, a ten-episode show set in an alternate timeline to the inter-connected MCU. It has a comic book appearance but puts a new spin on the web slinger’s story. This style and originality helped it climb to a 97% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes but Marvel has fallen a long way since then.

Its latest show was Marvel Zombies which was released in the run up to Halloween as it stars undead versions of classic heroes. Critics gave it a 66% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with audiences only scoring it 69%. August saw the debut of Eyes of Wakanda, a four-episode spinoff of Marvel’s 2018 blockbuster live action movie Black Panther. It introduced the Dora Milaje, an all-female special forces team from the fictional African nation of Wakanda and the animated series follows them traveling the world throughout history to retrieve artefacts made from the mythical metal vibranium.

It debuted to a 52% audience score though critics were more generous and awarded it 92% with its avant-garde animation earning it particular praise.

Eyes of Wakanda has a hand-painted style which was inspired by contemporary African-American artists and is the product of Scottish animation house Axis Studios. As this report explained, Axis went bankrupt after its work for Marvel was finished, but its location in the United Kingdom strongly indicates that Eyes of Wakanda is the animated show which cost $30.4 million to make.

That’s because its costs have come to light in filings from the U.K. As this author has reported extensively, studios which make movies and shows in the U.K. are eligible for a cash reimbursement, in the form of a tax credit, of up to 25.5% of the money they spend in the country. One of the key conditions is that at least 10% of the production’s core costs need to be spent in the U.K. and in order to demonstrate this to the authorities there studios set up separate companies to make each movie or show.

The companies file financial statements which reveal everything from their headcount, the salaries of its crew and their social security payments right up to the total cost of the production and the level of reimbursement it receives. Getting this information takes a bit of detective work as the companies have code names so that they don’t raise attention with fans when they file for permits to film on location.

One of Disney’s U.K. subsidiaries has the mysterious name of 4Vibes Productions UK and although it isn’t clear which Marvel title it made, there’s no doubt it was a show and that it wasn’t live action. That’s because the filings state that “the principal activity of the company is that of TV animation production” and add that “the company’s immediate parent undertaking is MVL Productions”, an affiliate of Marvel Studios.

All of the Marvel movies have been live action so 4Vibes Productions UK must have been behind one of Marvel’s animated shows and Eyes of Wakanda has the strongest ties to the U.K. Not only was its animation produced in the country but Britain’s Studio AKA also created its hand-drawn opening sequence. It is understood that the 4Vibes company name refers to the four episodes and the vibranium artefacts which the Wakandan warriors are hunting for.

Disney doesn’t comment on the code names of its companies or the specific costs of individual pictures shown in them. The filings do the talking and the latest set show that by June 30 last year the costs of 4Vibes Productions UK came to $30.4 million (£24.1 million) with a total tax credit of $3.1 million (£2.4 million) bringing its net spending down to $27.3 million.

Eyes of Wakanda was released 13 months after the date of the financial statements so if the company is behind the show, its total cost could actually be even higher than $30.4 million. It would still be a fraction of the cost of a big screen blockbuster and that really is a happy ending.