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For Marvel, a lot is riding on Captain America: Brave New World. The movie represents a first for the franchise – a change in the main character of an established series. Sam Wilson’s debut as Captain America was already poised to capture the spirit of 2014’s The Winter Soldier in terms of tone and even box office opening, but it turns out it also has a similar budget to boot, a potential sign that Marvel is pulling back from the inflated budgets of the past few MCU outings.

Buried in a report from The Hollywood Reporter where they discuss the projected opening weekend for Captain America: Brave New World is a line about the budget of the film. They put the budget of Brave New World at around $180 million. This is still a huge amount of money, but it pales in comparison to other recent Marvel films. For comparison, The Marvels had a budget of around $270 million, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was around $250 million, and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania clocked in at around $388 million.

You have to go back to Spider-Man: Far From Home for a Marvel movie with a comparable budget to Captain America 4. It cost $160 million to make, but it's adjusted-for-inflation figure is closer to $210 million. 

How does this budget compare to previous Captain America films? The first one during Phase One of the MCU cost around $140 million ($195 million adjusted for inflation) while Captain America: The Winter Soldier cost $170 million to make in 2014 ($236 million adjusted for inflation). Civil War, with its expanded cast and bigger set pieces, cost $235 million in 2016 ($307 million adjusted for inflation). That makes this the cheapest Captain America movie to date when you take pesky inflation into account.

Does this mean that we’re going to see more budget-friendly MCU movies going forward? It is tough to say for certain. This could tie into the strategy that Disney has mentioned of doing fewer Marvel films each year but having a bigger focus on quality, or it could be an anomaly that the superhero movie with a less established main character had a slightly lower budget than we all expected. Until Kevin Feige or someone similar confirms the reasoning behind the smaller budget for Captain America: Brave New World, all we can do is speculate.

Consider this a meta post-credits scene for Marvel fans - the four key articles you need to read next to continue the thrills:

• How to watch the Marvel Cinematic Universe in release or chronological order
• The best Marvel Comics stories of all time
• All the MCU movies ranked from best to worst
• Our weekly Marvel insider's column, Marvel Matters