‘The Fantastic Four’ On Track To Be One Of Disney's Cheapest Marvel Movies
Relevant bits:
It explains why the latest filings for Solve Everything Productions cover the 13 months to November 30, 2024, which coincided with the end of filming. They reveal that by then $229.6 million (£180.9 million) had been spent on the movie with one of the biggest single costs believed to be the wages of the staff who peaked at a monthly average of 265 people. That doesn’t even include freelancers, contractors and temporary workers as they aren't listed as employees on the books of U.K. companies even though they often represent the majority of the crew on a film shoot.
Disney was reimbursed $48.6 million (£38.3 million) for the movie bringing its net spending down to just $181 million which was a dream ticket for the studio.
\[...\]
The closest comparison to *The Fantastic Fou*r is Marvel's super hero spy movie *Black Widow* which premiered on June 29, 2021. Like *The Fantastic Four*, it also produced financial statements almost precisely eight months before it debuted. They showed that by then $255.6 million had been spent on the movie compared to $229.6 million on *The Fantastic Four* at precisely the same point before release.
*Black Widow's* costs subsequently increased to a total of $296.7 million (£232.3 million) and *The Fantastic Four's* spending is likely to rise in its next set of financial statements as post production was still underway when the latest set of filings was produced.
It explains why the latest filings for Solve Everything Productions cover the 13 months to November 30, 2024, which coincided with the end of filming. They reveal that by then $229.6 million (£180.9 million) had been spent on the movie with one of the biggest single costs believed to be the wages of the staff who peaked at a monthly average of 265 people. That doesn’t even include freelancers, contractors and temporary workers as they aren't listed as employees on the books of U.K. companies even though they often represent the majority of the crew on a film shoot.
Disney was reimbursed $48.6 million (£38.3 million) for the movie bringing its net spending down to just $181 million which was a dream ticket for the studio.
\[...\]
The closest comparison to *The Fantastic Fou*r is Marvel's super hero spy movie *Black Widow* which premiered on June 29, 2021. Like *The Fantastic Four*, it also produced financial statements almost precisely eight months before it debuted. They showed that by then $255.6 million had been spent on the movie compared to $229.6 million on *The Fantastic Four* at precisely the same point before release.
*Black Widow's* costs subsequently increased to a total of $296.7 million (£232.3 million) and *The Fantastic Four's* spending is likely to rise in its next set of financial statements as post production was still underway when the latest set of filings was produced.
Commentaires
Feige was blown away by the massive quality the The Creator team was able to get out of such a small budget, so he asked the VFX team and director how they pulled it off.
Coincidentally, F4 suddenly has some of the best MCU VFX ever (minus the baby).
Edit: named the wrong movie, lmao
I think? Idk I remember hearing something like that
But yea the movie looks great. I think a lot of it is also because they had SO much pre-production time to get the models perfect
What felt especially weird to me was the ending when they were fighting Galactus and the entire city was empty except for them. I understand that everyone evacuated underground, but it would’ve helped to create a sense of danger to have civilians being scared, etc. Think about how it was with Infinity War outside of the Sanctum Santorum, or even something like Pacific Rim…that did scale and destruction so good.
Feige met with The Creator production to understand how they got their budgets lower, but never heard about Godzilla Minus One.
https://deadline.com/2025/07/marvel-superman-kevin-feige-1236462997/
Do you find yourself a generally negative person? I wonder how that colors people’s perceptions of reality.
There’s a few scenes in the guardians movies, a couple establishing shots in end game and the final scene of Loki S2. Other than that I can’t think of many visually stunning sequences in the MCU per se. Good but rarely stunning.
The space chase sequence was nearly as thrilling and visually delicious as anything I have seen in any movie, MCU or not and Galactus’ costuming is up there with some of the best in the MCU as well, alongside Man-Thing
Eternals however is also gorgeous in the way I mean fantastic four is. def a contender! All three are but F4 has the bonus of set design and music and VFX all at a high level so that’s what motivated my statement
Clearly either marvel in-house has brought in more visionary talent or recent directors have been more thoughtful
The part in Brave New World with the battle around the celestial looked rough at times and the part at the end from the White House to the cherry blossoms was awful. Everything is computer generated and Sam (cap) just looks like he’s standing in front of a green screen talking to no one.
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/john-malkovich-cut-fantastic-four-red-ghost-1236461392/
PS - it also seems like Natasha Lyonne lost scenes as her stuff with Ben Grimm felt like it had a lot more to it. Still in the movie but barely.
For those who don’t know, Malkovich was also supposed to play the Vulture in the cancelled “Spider-Man 4” that never got to filming.
Marvel owes this dude big time after honey-dicking him (and me) twice.
A slow...walking...giant...be careful or he might swat you with his hand....
It’s like “perfectly” paced as in just enough without being boring and getting on enough with Drama or action - anything less and we’d be hungry and literally anything more and we’d have a hands down classic.
Thunderbolts big final battlr was a mental meltdown and hugs.
Yeh no battles just sombre depressing set pieces.
What a suprirse the gneral audience diesnt want to watch these 'super hero' movies
But i feel like each time this point is raised here people would tell you that "it's too goofy" or that "his main power is his brain anyway, he doesn't have to be stretchy"
God forbid we get some whimsy in our superhero flick
Plus, the VFX usage was insane for a TV show.
Because of this, the special effects teams had a lot less time to make the scenes look better and I think first impressions contributed to how people perceive the CG.
Seems like time is way more valuable than money with this stuff
But important to note, that this is just the cost until Nov 2024, so not including post production and reshoots, plus anything else.
The budget is going to be significantly higher. I always guessed a 275Mish budget, with a 50M+ rebate.
Whatever it is it still fits the 200M+ bill Disney posted to Variety when they first reported the film's budget. The next set of report couldn't come soon enough.
As Loki once said, "Sure. **Burn it down. Easy**. Annihilating is easy. Razing things to the ground is easy. Trying to fix what's broken is hard. **Hope is hard**."
Like the limitation that if Venom came out fully, the Xenophages would know their location? That screamed budget to me.
For one, Phase 4 would have likely kept its original release dates, more or less. Black Widow sat waiting for 14 months. They tried to close the gap, but by the end of Phase 4, Wakanda Forever was still delivered 6 months late
We’d definitely have an Avengers movie by now, I think that’s safe to say. Maybe even two.
Kang *might* have even made it as the villain for those movies too.
Jeff Loveness began writing Secret Wars in Sept. 2022, when it was slated to be released by May 2025. Majors got arrested in March 2023, and Disney officially replaced him in December 2023 when he was convicted. I have a feeling a script was pretty much ready, but as soon as they were confident enough to scrap Kang and rewrite, the writer’s strike happened.
All things considered though, they’ve still managed to keep a very steady output. Outside of the lost year of 2020, and 2024 only having a single movie due to the dual strikes, they’ve kept a miraculously steady cadence, quickly bouncing back to 3 movies a year whenever possible
EDIT: Looks like this may not reflect the full budget after account for post production. So a slimmer profit.
crazy to spend the least on arguably the most cg intensive team but that’s why there’s no monkeys, no thing plot, but I don’t understand why Johnny had his space plot shrunken, at least that would’ve been cheap to fulfill.
I know why it matters at the end of the day, people will use the expense of these movies as an excuse to only get Avengers movies and stop experimenting because the juice isn't worth the squeeze but just going to the movies and not worrying about how much it costs is all we as fans should worry about.
The secret to good budget control is good planning beforehand and always has been.
So on current costs break even was 452 but a straight 200 would bring this to 500.
Deadpools budget jumped from 200 to over 400 but that was the usual Hollywood downplaying that has been observed openly by creatives (Scott Dereckson and Jason Blum were the first heard openly say most Hollywood budgets were understated by at least 25 percent).
A small profit should be the result.