Disney Received Over Half a Billion Dollars in Tax-Payer-Funded Government Handouts

Making a superhero movie can be expensive. However, the payoffs from those films can be massive.

Of the 55 films that have made more than $1 billion at the box office, 22 are superhero films, while Disney has made 30 of them 55 billion dollars.

However, spending hundreds of millions on a film also carries a risk: it could tank. Disney/Marvel learned this lesson in 2023 with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and The Marvels, both of which lost hundreds of millions for Disney and Marvel Studios.

Given the risk associated with these films, Disney looks for every possible way to ensure that its films make money or at least break even. Now, Disney may have found a foolproof way of ensuring that its films have less risk: have the government pay for them.

National, state, and local governments offer considerable incentives to film on location, and Disney has reaped massive benefits from these programs. However, none has been more significant than the incentives the United Kingdom gave.

Unlike in America, when Disney/Marvel films are in the United Kingdom, the company must publicly disclose how much they spent in the country to receive the tax incentives. However, the UK must also tell its citizens exactly how much Disney receives in tax incentives from the government.

As it turns out, Disney has received more than half a billion for filming 15 Marvel films in the United Kingdom. According to Forbes, Disney received $666.4 million in tax-payer-funded incentives from the British government.

Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) received the highest incentive, $87.1 million. The Avengers films grossed over $1.4 billion at the box office.

These incentives have worked out well for the United Kingdom government. Disney announced it would spend $5 billion over the next five years on films and television shows filmed in the country.

The British Film Institute studies how effective these incentives are for the people of the United Kingdom, showing that for every dollar film companies receive in tax incentives, they spend $10 in the country. At a 10 times return, the UK government receives on its investment in films and television.

In 2019, the UK government estimates that filming created more than 40,000 jobs in the country. So, the benefits come not just from the spending but also from the taxes these new employees pay to the government.

California has seen film productions leave the state and recently decided to increase its spending on tax incentives for film companies. However, for California and the United Kingdom, it’s a bad look to give handouts to multi-national billion-dollar companies while cutting services for its citizens.

Either way, Disney and Marvel benefit from this fight over where companies film, and it really does pay off.