Secret Invasion reportedly debuted to extremely low viewership- only 994,00 viewers, the 2nd worst debut for a show outside of Ms. Marvel.
However, estimating viewership on a steaming platform is somewhat of a guessing game as the streamers never officially release any statistics. This practice is one of the key issues in the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strike as the lack of transparency affects the residuals the streamers have to pay to writers and actors.
Still, this report can't be too far off as Disney CEO Bob Iger recently made comments that Marvel may have overextended itself with its foray into television.
Moving forward, Iger stated that the company would reduce its spending on both Marvel and Star Wars projects.
Now, a new report from Forbes reveals that Marvel's Secret Invasion was severely over budget and the final tally came in at $211.6 million.
For context, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 had a production budget of $250 million while Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania had a budget of $200 million. There's no box office revenue coming in to offset the cost of Secret Invasion and recent reports indicate that Disney+ is likely to start bleeding international subscribers as it just lost the rights to stream cricket.
Another point of context would be Loki season 1, which premiered to the tune of 2.5 million viewers.
Forbes reports that Secret Invasion was primarily filmed at Pinewood Studios just outside London and that the UK has a tax reimbursement for projects filmed in the country. However, this reimbursement program requires projects to disclose how much they spent on production, which is how Forbes discovered Secret Invasion's budget.
A likely factor for the ballooned budget was the fact that the show underwent 4 months of extensive reshoots, which lead Samuel L. Jackson previously confirmed.
With declining viewership on Disney+ Marvel projects and recent reports that attendance at the theme parks in Florida and California is slowing down, don't be surprised if we soon get reports that a few previously announced Marvel television and film projects are outright canceled.
In Marvel Studios' new series Secret Invasion, set in the present day MCU, Nick Fury learns of a clandestine invasion of Earth by a faction of shapeshifting Skrulls. Fury joins his allies, including Everett Ross, Maria Hill and the Skrull Talos, who has made a life for himself on Earth. Together they race against time to thwart an imminent Skrull invasion and save humanity.