With concerns that superhero fatigue is setting in, Marvel Studios has been under scrutiny for how much it spends on its movies and shows. Once a box office behemoth that seemed like a guaranteed lock to hit a billion at the box office, Marvel's struggles of late have caused the studio to rethink its strategy.
Not only are we seeing fewer Marvel movies and series in production, but we're starting to see them made on lower budgets as well.
Marvel has a tendency to overspend on its projects. If the results were there, it'd be fine. But they haven't been lately which is the problem. So the only thing Marvel can do really is spend less when making their movies and shows, which is easier said than done.
However, a new report from Forbes has revealed the production budget for Marvel's most recent Disney+ series, Echo, and it proves that the studio is capable of producing a solid show at a decent cost. Forbes reports that the TV-MA "Marvel Spotlight" series had a production budget of $40 million. For comparison, the maligned Secret Invasion had a production budget of $212 million while the divisive She-Hulk: Attorney at Law also had a budget of $212 million.
According to Comicbookmovie.com, other series like Hawkeye and WandaVision also had budgets north of $200 million, while The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, Moon Knight and Loki Season 2 are thought to have come in at around $150 million.
Regardless of whether or not you enjoyed any of these series, I think we can all acknowledge that they didn't offer enough to warrant a budget that surpasses the cost of making an average movie. Echo wasn't anything out of the ordinary or that we haven't seen from Marvel already in the past, but it was a solid and enjoyable series about an interesting character who deserved her spotlight. I wouldn't mind more of these standalone series, as long as they are within reasonable budgets.