By Recently came reports that Marvel Studios’ nine-episode series “Agatha All Along” is the cheapest show the company has made for Disney+ to date.
It’s a report that Marvel Studios’ head of streaming, television and animation, Brad Winderbaum, has now confirmed. Speaking with Variety, he says: “It’s our least expensive show, and I think that was by design”.
Winderbaum didn’t go into numbers, but this confirms the show falls behind “Hawkeye” spinoff “Echo” which came in at a reported budget of around $8 million an episode.
A big reason for the cost-effectiveness is a reliance on practical effects over the use of computer animation, and by doing so it offers the writers and producers more creative freedom:
“We are looking to make these shows for a responsible cost. Frankly, it gives us a little bit more freedom creatively when we can bring them in at a reasonable budget. Like [‘Agatha All Along’], for example, the show has minimal CG, way less than we’ve ever done before. It’s mostly practical effects, and I think you can feel it in the show.”
Every streamer is adopting a more cost-conscious approach these days as streamers and networks reign in runaway budgets. Marvel, especially, was regularly spending as much as $25 million per episode on series – a number unheard of even a few years ago.
Winderbaum adds that the new frugal approach “certainly holds true with ‘Daredevil’ and our future slate as we look down the pike at 2026 and 2027. That’s certainly the goal.”
He also says it’s not about removing effects, it’s more about being judicious with the shots that require them:
“I think it’s about how you use the effects, as opposed to the scale of the effects, and we’re responding to to our own recent history here, and how effective effects really are in increasing the value of a story.”
The first episode of “Agatha” scored 9.3 million views in its first seven days of availability and Winderbaum claims the show has the best continuation rate of any Marvel series to date.
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