Earlier today, news arose that not only would Marvel's first Freeform joint, Cloak and Dagger,
be filming in just a few weeks, in the city of New Orleans, but that it would be filming under the codename
Shadows. Well, I took it upon myself to do a bit of digging, and I found an interesting article from
NOLA of Disney making a deal back in december to film a project named, you guessed it, "Shadows- Season 1". It's also stated
The report indicated that the shoot would last for
86 days, and would have a budget of
$42 million. For comparison, the production deal with New York for the Netflix Defenders franchise (which, at the time, was 4 shows and a miniseries) was a whopping
$200 million, which would (assuming Defenders cost just as much as the other four series) average to about
$40 million dollars each, roughly. So its clear that Marvel's willing to spend the dough on this series as much as they are on their Netflix counterparts, as it seems that
Cloak and Dagger's budget is just as big as the Netflix shows.
As to why the show is filming in New Orleans, I also found an explanation for that. Way, way back when Cloak and Dagger first began developing (which, to give you an idea, was when Guillermo Del Toro was going to do a Hulk TV show and Freeform was named ABC Family), the original premise in 2011 was that the show would be set in a
'post-Katrina New Orleans', an element which has apparently stuck with the project throughout the whopping 6 years of development.
So what are your thoughts? Are your concerns over the show's budget alleviated now that you have an idea of what it is? Since Marvel's clearly willing to make it rain even on the Freeform side, what does that mean for Marvel's future on the platform? Do you think we could see a vast expansion of Marvel content on Freeform, similar to how the CW took on several more DC comic adaptations? Comment below!