Avengers: Infinity War will allegedly have a budget of $1B

That's just absurd.

I want this to bomb so hard.

You are correct sir, and both films should gross $2 billion worldwide combined, so they'll make their money back.

I was going to say that it did sound high with the current Pound exchange rate, didn't knew it would be in Georgia.



If that would include world P&A, it would have been the average big superheros movie price, if we use an other recent big superheroes movie Amazing spider man 2 for a comparison:

Direct Production cost: 312 million gross, 263.95 million net
World P&A: 191.74 million
Home Ent releasing marketing cost: around 20 million
Overhead: 31.5 million

Those avengers movie must cost much more than the spider man one by now.

But they never put P&A cost in conversation about a movie production, that make little sense (and why stop there why not include home media releasing cost, overhead, interest, etc...)

Would a 1 billion gross production cost (say that an exagerate round up of a 933 million or so figure) make sense ?

Pirates 4 was around 407 million, so that would make the Avengers movies about as expensive as the Pirate 4

If that cast list is close to the truth, that cost a fortune, specially that some actor like Benedict Cumberbatch didn't need it and could have asked for a lot of money, many are now in a second contract by now:
www.imdb.com/title/tt4154756/fullcredits/

And they probably spend 20 million+ on that long list of producers salary by movie (maybe on Feige alone), 20 million by movie on the Russos Team at the very minimum, RDJ is probably at 40 by movie or so.

You start with an above the line cost of probably 120+ million.

Maybe they will want to be the first movie with 6k if not more higher resolution special effect rendering and total pipeline for some digital imax gimmick that will cost them a fortune too.

460-470 million by movie sound possible, that 30% very generous Georgia tax rebate will make them on the reasonable side, Spider Man 3 had a 299 million net budget after rebate after all, that was 10 year's ago and not an assemble cast. Age of Ultron had already spent over 300 million (208.1 million pound in 2014) on production when they were still more than 6 month before the release date and a lot of post production cost ahead. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/disney-handed-record-31m-tax-credit-for-filming-avengers-in-uk-9783561.html)

Yea 3bil combined would be the minimum for me if I was a top guy over at Marvel. 

cornnetto Shouldn't they spend a lot less on these films if they're making them back-to-back, though? A $500 million total investment minus tax rebates makes sense for a stand-alone tentpole, but that's not the case here, so I don't know if those are necessarily the best comparisons. It's my understanding that they're shooting these Infinity War films as one production, in which case $1 billion is insane.

Holy shit! How on earth is that even justified?

Apparently the track record on saving money with back to back shoot is not that great, all the SAG type guild and everyone involved make sure to be pay as much as for 2 movies if not more in those situation because of the workload, apparently like said above it is often a choice made for scheduling reason.

Because you often have more post-production time for the second movie (less overtime, can give more of the work to the same SFX shop, etc...)
 and if well done with not more reshoot less traveling cost, maybe you can save there a bit.

People in the know seem to all say that it is not a lot less type of rebate (lot of the cost that are save like using same costumes/same built virtual world CGI, set, already made production design, etc... would still be true for the normal sequel that are not shot back to back).

Depending for what you mean by 500 million minus tax rebate for a total investment, it would not just make sense, that would be on the cheap side for a big franchise sequel with returning actor.

For an example of an expensive super heroes movie, Spider-Man 3 (back when the spider man movies were making fortunes cash load), in 2007 money


Production budget: 299.76 million (net, not gross)
Overhead: 41.95 million
World P&A: 243 million (not a bigger marketing cost than movie have now, but 10 year's ago they spend 68 million in film prints, the cost of film distribution would have became crazy with the number of screen in the world of today)
World Home Ent release: 149.282 million
Participation bonus: 154.6 million

Of the 1122 million revenue made by Sony on that movie, they ended up with 188.2 million in profit, for a total cost of nearly 934 million.

It obviously depends on those 15-20 big names contract involved in those movie (Feige, Russos, RDJ mainly, but still many others stars) that really determine how crazy 500 million would be for the production cost.

Disney and the cast know the movie will make a lot of money, so if they pay people specially in salary and not really in first dollar gross bonus, Disney wanting and able to accept the risk to maximize profit, paying them a lot now but not giving 250-300 million in bonus later but something more reasonable would not make a 450-500 before tax credit budget for an Avengers crazy to me, not at all. If that money deliver on screen and cast assemble, you can blow away in a spectacle, and the avengers movie did show that they help all the mcu movie released in their follow up, there is a lot, lot of money on the table to a lot of movies (including part 2) to blow people away with Part 1.

This means it will definitely be the greatest film ever, right?

I kind of doubt that, total expense on the Spider man 3 movie was around 934 million and is one of the most profitable Sony movie ever, with around 180 million in profit (and they didn't controlled the merchandising as well as Disney).

Georgia has a as up as 30% tax credit on local expense, without a cap, England has also good tax credit.

I suspect the number is a gross round up exaggeration or include the hundreds of millions RDJ will do with some of those being participation bonus, but even if true depending on the people like Feige deal, it could still give a giant 25-30% ROI.

They will never release the actual budget (and if Georgia law do not change) it will never be known, we only know the actual budget of the MCU movie shoot in England because they become record accessible by the press via the movie tax credit law.

But yeah the credit the press will throw around will probably your usual fill up number they use when they have no clue on a movie actual budget, round number like 250 or 300 million.