Last year, Disney faced several disappointments at the box office. The first for 2023 was the third Ant-Man film, “Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania.” Released on February 17, 2023, the film only brought in $476.1 million. While many accepted that Disney likely lost money on the film, a new report seemingly indicates that they may have lost much more than initially thought.
According to Caroline Reid from Forbes, the film’s budget was estimated by the media to be around $200 million. Still, a recent financial filing seems to indicate it was significantly higher, at $326.6 million! It seems that a financial statement was filed for the end-of-year report on December 31, 2022, which was just a few weeks ahead of the film’s release.
Where did she find the information?
Reid indicates that she found the filing by looking for the film’s code name, which she says was Pym Productions III. This makes sense as Hank Pym was Ant-Man and is responsible for the Pym particles from the film. The III would indicate a third film, hence “Ant-Man III” which is what the Quantumania film was.
She also points out that Disney seemingly collaborated on this in their report, which said, “At the year-end, the cost was forecasted to exceed the production budget.”
It is important to note that they did get a $50.6 million credit from the U.K. government for filming there. That would bring Disney’s total to about $276 million. Just to break even, the film would have needed to bring in about $550-$600 million, and it didn’t even break the lower number.
The film did not perform well with critics or audiences.
The film was also poorly reviewed. Critics have it at 46% on Rotten Tomatoes. Audiences gave it 74%—82%, depending on the “all” or “verified” scores. Many complaints pertained to the terrible and sometimes unfinished CGI in the film.
This has been attributed to changes made in the film by those in charge who did not give the VFX team enough time to finish the work.
It was so bad that after the film came out, some artists spoke out about the issues. An artist referred to as “Jim” said:
“For Ant-Man, there were a lot of editorial changes happening toward the latter third and fourth of the project that were just too late. There’s a point of no return. Why certain things were changed, why certain notes were nitpicked longer than they should have been; That’s on Marvel. But it definitely did cause a lot of tension, turmoil, and weight on everybody.“
By summer, Marvel VFX workers had voted to unionize over the conditions.
If Reid’s report is accurate, the budget for the film was underreported, and the only way to find the actual numbers was via code names, as Disney tried to shuffle the information around. It seems it failed far worse than what was readily revealed. Marvel has a real problem. The one bright spot for 2024 is “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
For Disney’s sake, it better do incredibly well.
What do you think? Comment and let us know.
Source: Forbes
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