With Avengers: Infinity War setting box office records left, right and centre – including the biggest opening of all time, and the fastest movie to gross $1 billion – the accountants at Disney and Marvel Studios must be breathing a sigh of relief, as directors Joe and Anthony Russo have revealed that the superhero epic went over budget, and was costing Marvel up to $450,000 per day.
Appearing on Sway in the Morning, Joe revealed that Avengers: Infinity War and the as-yet-untitled Avengers 4 “shot for a year straight from January to January with about two weeks in-between”, stating that costs ending up being “350, 400, 450,000 dollars a day just to keep the production running” and that “we did go over budget.”
Speaking about where the money went, Anthony joked that “we gave most of it to Downey”, with Joe then explaining that: “It does break down that way where the cast does get a big percentage of it. These movies have been incredibly successful, there’s 18 of them, and typically as movies succeed, the cast can get more expensive. The VFX are incredibly expensive on a movie like this, well into the hundreds of millions. So between those two, those are the largest categories that take most of the money. Then there’s just the day-to-day running of a production that can be very expensive.”
Earlier reports had suggested that the combined budget for Infinity War and Avengers 4 was in the region of $1 billion, which would put the blockbusters ahead of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ($378.5 million) for the most expensive movies ever made.
An unprecedented cinematic journey ten years in the making and spanning the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Infinity War” brings to the screen the ultimate, deadliest showdown of all time. The Avengers and their Super Hero allies must be willing to sacrifice all in an attempt to defeat the powerful Thanos before his blitz of devastation and ruin puts an end to the universe.
Avengers: Infinity War stars Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man), Chris Evans (Captain America), Mark Ruffalo (Hulk), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Scarlett Johansson (Black Widow), Chadwick Boseman (Black Panther), Tom Holland (Spider-Man), Sebastian Stan (Winter Soldier), Anthony Mackie (Falcon), Paul Bettany (Vision), Elizabeth Olsen (Scarlet Witch), Don Cheadle (War Machine), Josh Brolin (Thanos), Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange), Benedict Wong (Wong), Chris Pratt (Star-Lord), Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Dave Bautista (Drax), Bradley Cooper (Rocket), Sean Gunn (Rocket), Vin Diesel (Groot), Karen Gillan (Nebula), Pom Klementieff (Mantis), Tom Hiddleston (Loki), Samuel L. Jackson (Nick Fury), Cobie Smulders (Maria Hill), Benicio Del Toro (The Collector), Danai Gurira (Okoye), Letitia Wright (Shuri), Winston Duke (M’Baku), Terry Notary (Cull Obsidian), Tom Vaughan-Lawlor (Ebony Maw), Carrie Coon (Proxima Midnight), Michael James Shaw (Corvus Glaive) and Peter Dinklage (Eitri).
Via Comic Book