“Agatha All Along” Becomes Cheapest Marvel Disney+ Series So Far
In September, Marvel Studios released its latest original series, “Agatha All Along”, on Disney+ around the world, which sees Kathryn Hahn return to play the role of Agatha, who was introduced in the hit Marvel series, “WandaVision”.
In “Agatha All Along,” the infamous Agatha Harkness finds herself down and out of power after a suspicious goth Teen helps break her free from a distorted spell. Her interest is piqued when he begs her to take him on the legendary Witches’ Road, a magical gauntlet of trials that, if survived, rewards a witch with what they’re missing. Together, Agatha and this mysterious Teen pull together a desperate coven, and set off down, down, down The Road…
Last week, Disney revealed that the first episode was watched by 9.3 million viewers, which is slightly lower than some of the other recent releases like “The Acolyte”.
So far, “Agatha All Along” seems to be pleasing the fans, with positive reviews and social media discussion. But more importantly for Disney, this show will be seen as a huge hit for another reason: the budget!
According to THR, “Agatha All Along” is the cheapest show that Marvel Studios has created for Disney+. That honour had previously belonged to “Echo”, which cost an estimated $40 million and only consisted of five episodes, compared to “Agatha All Along” coming in at nine episodes.
Marvel has made some major changes in how it develops television, returning to a more traditional television model that it hopes will not only keep budgets lower but also keep fans entertained. With some of the previous Marvel Disney+ series costing over $200 million, if “Agatha” has been created for so much less and still delivered results, this is a huge positive for the future of Marvel television shows.
The days of Disney spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new shows for Disney+ are over as the company looks to reduce costs following too many epic failures, which have been panned by critics and fans alike.
There are many differences in how “Agatha All Along” was created, with a cheaper cast and more on-location and physical sets, which are much cheaper to work with than lots of special effects. There are still some special visual effects being used, but it’s far less than we’ve seen when compared to shows like “The Acolyte” or “She-Hulk: Attorney At Law”. This will likely continue going forward as Disney creates fewer shows and focuses its big budgets on theatrical releases, while still providing fans with entertainment, but just on a lower budget.
Roger’s Take: There’s little doubt that you can see that “Agatha All Along” has been created on a much smaller budget, but ironically, I think that makes the show work so much better, since it doesn’t feel like a movie cut up into pieces and its been constructed as a traditional television show. Disney couldn’t continue spending hundreds of millions of dollars on major Marvel and Star Wars shows without them bringing in huge viewers.
While “Agatha All Along” might not have the biggest viewership for a Marvel show on Disney+, from a financial point of view, the show is likely to be one of the most successful in terms of money spent vs. viewership.
There is an argument that those major shows needed stronger scripts and needed to be much better, as the last few releases have been subpar, but there is little doubt we are going to need to get used to much smaller-scale Disney+ Originals in the future.
Do you think Marvel is right to cut back on its budgets for Disney+ shows? Let me know on social media!
Roger Palmer
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