The Marvel Cinematic Universe shows so far on Disney+ — Loki, WandaVision, Falcon, and the Winter Soldier — are like the movies, because they cost so much to make.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe was never a low-budget franchise, and even the first Iron Man movie cost $140 million to produce. To be fair, Tony Stark first grossed $585 million worldwide, setting an early tone for Marvel Studios, that big spending on their films would eventually equate to greater profits.
Each movie in the MCU had a budget of $100 million or more, and in many recent cases, it exceeded $200 million. When every recent MCU movie tends to surpass - or at least approach - the billion-dollar mark worldwide, it's hard to argue that the cash truckloads of Marvel Studios and parent company Disney aren't worth it for the long run. The MCU has earned a reputation for consistent quality and consistently good visuals, and this has been proven to be no different with Disney+.
Visually, they're also on par with the big-screen adventures of the MCU heroes, especially WandaVision and Loki, who enjoyed much more brutal special effects shots than those of the more touching Falcon and The Winter Soldier. As one might imagine, things like that are far from cheap, and all three shows cost big bucks. The addition of TV shows to the MCU has raised some questions about whether Marvel is finally risking oversaturating the franchise, but just as many have been waiting for over a decade now for Marvel Studios to release their first really bad movie, the MCU offerings so far are hitting With both critics and fans.
It's no surprise that Marvel Studios hasn't released exact budget numbers for Loki, WandaVision, or The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Neither Marvel nor Disney is known to have come forward with such financial details. However, reports from around the time of the Disney+ launch in 2019 shed some light on this topic. It has been reported that each Marvel Studios show on Disney+ will likely cost around $25 million per episode. That sounds like a lot, and it beats even shows like Game of Thrones by a large margin.
This means that if the $25 million figure is kept, a nine-episode WandaVision run could cost Marvel and Disney a whopping $225 million. That still pales in comparison to the cost of a movie like Avengers: Endgame, but it's astronomically high for a TV show. Falcon, Winter Soldier, and Loki ran only six episodes, which means their run has likely crossed about $150 million in production costs. That's a lot, but at least a saving from WandaVision. It's important to keep in mind that these numbers likely do not include marketing costs. Fortunately, all three of the MCU shows have been a huge hit, potentially attracting thousands, if not millions, of new Disney+ subscribers.