How Did Secret Invasion Possibly Cost $212M, Way More Than Box Office Hits Like Barbie and Oppenheimer?
Disney+’s latest live-action Marvel series, Secret Invasion, reportedly carried a budget of $212 million — meaning it cost more than six out of this year’s Top 10 box office blockbusters.
And while several sites, after Forbes reported on that shocking sticker price, have already asked versions of, “How on Earth is that possible?,” I am here, back from vacation, to ask TVLine readers….
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How on Earth is that possible?!?!
Assume that a Secret Invasion spoiler or two follows….
I was told there would be no math when we launched TVLine, but nonetheless, here are some numbers to mull before we break down the pricier moments from each of the six episodes.
* Secret Invasion‘s total running time was 4 hours, 32 minutes (including closing credits). The longest-running blockbusters out of 2023’s current Top 10 are Oppenheimer (which spanned three hours) and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 (2 hours, 43 minutes). Most everything else was much closer to a lean two hours, and even less.
* Even if you get bogged down in pro-rating costs over running time, Secret Invasion cost $780K/minute compared to Oppenheimer’s $555K/minute. And though Oppenheimer was talky and used practical effects when needed, it had a sprawling, stacked cast.
* The budgets for other Marvel TV series are hard to lock down; it’s only because Secret Invasion filmed in London under the government’s Television Tax Relief program that its price tag became public. But per assorted online reports, only WandaVision and She-Hulk, which each cost $225 million (or $25 million/episode), had bigger budgets.
* Samuel L. Jackson, by one very unofficial tally, fetches $10-$20 million for a lead role in a motion picture. Don Cheadle was pulling in about $8 million for each of the Infinity War films.
All told, the budget for Secret Invasion was larger than the movies Super Mario ($100M), Barbie ($100M), Across the Spiderverse ($100M), Oppenheimer ($100M), Ant-Man 3 ($200M) and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts ($200M).
Meaning, that out of this year’s box office Top 10, only Guardians of the Galaxy 3 ($250M), Fast X ($340M!), The Little Mermaid ($250M) and Dead Reckoning Part 1 ($291M) cost more.
And if you venture beyond the Top 10 box office grossers, Secret Invasion cost nearly as much as the heavily delayed/reshot The Flash ($220M) and a lot more than the action- and stunts-packed John Wick 4 ($100M) — yet nowhere near as much as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ($295M).
Yet no matter how you slice it, where — where? — did that $212 million appear on-screen?
This morning I combed all six episodes of Secret Invasion, and sprinkled above and below are screenshots of some reasonable guesses as to the “pricier” scenes from each — most notably, the premiere’s bombing of a Moscow square (which was explodey and involved many extras), the midseason attack on President Ritson’s motorcade, and the finale’s CGI punch-fest.
Yet for Episode 2, I was hard-pressed to find any “expensive”-looking moment/sequence, and had to settle on the tarmac scene just due to it being a location shoot with many extras. The rest of Episode 2 was a lot of talking scenes (Talos/Fury, Fury/Rhodey), often between just two to three characters.
Shall we assume that the finale’s big fight, though it was only four minutes long (and that’s not accounting for cutaways to the Rhodey/Fury hospital face-off), contributed most to the Secret Invasion bill?
But perhaps most stinging is that Marvel Studios and Disney+ did not get much bang for their buck. When all was said and done, Secret Invasion netted poor reviews — nearly half of those who voted in a TVLine poll ranked it among the two worst Marvel series — and its viewership reportedly has been on the low side amongst MCU TV series.
How/where do you suspect Secret Invasion rang up a tab of $212 million?
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