The Avengers – $700 Million to make? – Give me a break

Under the category of “some of the stupidest things ever said”, Marvel comic writer Brian Bendis said that a movie version of The Avengers probably won’t be hitting the big screen anytime soon because they’re estimating the project would cost… are you ready for this… $700 million to produce. Ok, this is just ignorant. Having worked in the Visual Effects industry for a few years I realize big effects films can cost a lot of money to make. But this $700 million comment is insulting. Considering that Spider-Man 2 cost around $200 million (really expensive), and no Star Wars film (Best visual effects films every) cost $200 million… and all 3 Lord of the Rings films together cost about $368 million to produce… how stupid does Bendis believe we are? Or, in the alternative, how stupid is Bendis himself to actually believe that? Why not just say “The new Captain America movie is going to cost Eleventy bajillion zillion dollars”. If it’s impossible to make the movie right now then just say “it’s impossible to make the movie right now” and move on.

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7 thoughts on “The Avengers – $700 Million to make? – Give me a break

  1. Bendis has an issue with budgets. The last good arc of Powers which featured a Superman like character going crazy, Bendis claimed it would take 500 million to film it. There were no big fight scenes. The biggest “effect” was the burning of several cities and even that was done via a TV news report which could be done cheaply. There were no huge sets, few uses of Superpowers. Honest I find it hard to think such a film would cost more that 60 million.

  2. I know what he meant.

    He’s building up his own part, he’s the one who wants ¬£680million to write the script, the rest is to make it!

    (Oh, add on the costs for paper and large crayons of course)

  3. i think what Bendis meant was that the movie rights to each character in the Avengers is owned by different studios. So to make a movie they would have to pay each studio a licensing fee for their character, thus making the movie far too expensive to make.

  4. 700 million!? Jeezus! I think they’d make a deal with the licensing if they were going to use a ton of characters like the film would require. The film would do GREAT and There would be 5-6 Heroes that could have spin-off movies of their own. I’d estimate 400 million production, or cheaper if they gave a % of profits to Marvel instead for licensing.

  5. also to be fair, visual effects could have been the furthest thing from his mind. Theres a lot of liscensing rights involved with a movie of that calibur, which is one of the reasons why a movie like the hobbit will be such a bitch to get made, one of the hugest epic movie to be made recently with one of the biggest budgets ever, and they cant afford to make a followup movie? Licensing can kill a budget pretty quickly. Added to that the big name director, and all the big name actors needed to sell the parts, and yeah you got some issues. Not 700m in issues, but who knows.

  6. To be fair, Bendis is just a writer. He isnt a producer, filmmaker, special effects guy or anything at all to do with film.

    That being said, I would qualify this statement under the “guy who doesnt know crap about what movies cost to make saying something that proves it” category

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