Disney made an estimated $296.4 million loss at the box office on just two of its Marvel superhero movies in 2023 according to analysis of recently-released financial statements.
They reveal that the cost of making The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania came to a staggering $762.4 million (£609.3 million) before Disney banked $124.9 million (£99.4 million) in government incentives bringing its net spending on the movies down to $637.5 million. They both bombed at the box office.
According to industry analyst Box Office Mojo, the movies grossed a combined $682.2 million with theaters typically retaining 50% of the takings and the remainder going to the studio. This reflects the findings of film industry consultant Stephen Follows who interviewed 1,235 film professionals in 2014 and concluded that, according to studios, theaters keep 49% of the takings on average. It would give Disney just $341.1 million from The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. No expense was spared on them.
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Disney does not publicly discuss how much it spends on specific productions and did not respond to a request for comment. Budgets are usually a closely-guarded secret. This is because studios combine the costs of individual pictures in their overall expenses and their filings don’t itemize how much was spent on each one. Films made in the UK are exceptions and both The Marvels and Quantumania fall into this category.
Studios shoot in the UK to benefit from its Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit (AVEC) which gives them a cash reimbursement of up to 25.5% of the money they spend in the country.
To qualify for the reimbursement, at least 10% of the production costs need to relate to activities in the UK. In order to demonstrate this to the UK government, studios tend to set up a separate production company in the country for each movie they make there.
The companies have to file financial statements which shine a spotlight on their budgets. They reveal everything from the headcount and salaries to the level of reimbursement and the total costs. Studios directly receive the revenue from theater tickets, streaming and Blu-ray sales and carry the costs of marketing as the function of the UK companies is purely making the movies.
For the x-wing banking in space, it could be because that’s how the thrust vectors are lined up. Like maybe it can turn on the y axis (yaw), but it’s much better at turning on the x axis (pitch), so he turns it on the z axis (roll) to line up the x axis with the rotation he really wants to make.
Many space flight sims work this way, though tbf it might be because they are mimicking winged flight characteristics from air-based flight sims.
But I think it does make sense from an engineering and production pov because you can make the yaw mechanism smaller than the pitch mechanism while still being capable of turning in any direction.
Though I gotta wonder how a universe like Star Wars with clearly advanced AIs generally makes them clumsy contraptions and tends to leave flying and aiming ship weapons to humans. It makes sense for the force-sensitive characters, but the millennium falcon should have had a button to press to shoot down all tie fighters in the time it takes the guns to point at where each fighter will be, and the fighters themselves should have been unmanned and shot the falcon from multiple angles before they had a chance to push that button.
It’s not enough to ruin the media IMO, but just amusing to see cool tech in media but also clear signs the writers didn’t realize the full implications of tech like that existing and that nothing exists in a bubble.