Media giant Disney has revealed that it spent $90m on making its hit streaming series Moon Knight, which was partly filmed in Jordan’s Wadi Rum.
The six-part series debuted on Disney+ in the Middle East in June and stars Oscar Isaac as the mystical Marvel Comics character Moon Knight, whose powers come from the Egyptian moon god Khonshu.
Members of the crew came from across the Middle East including Egyptian editor Ahmed Hafez, fashion designer Reem al-Amal, Dubai resident DJ Kaboo and Mohamed Diab, the first Arab director to lead a Marvel project.
Disney+ series filmed in Jordan
Fittingly, he chose to film in the Wadi Rum desert which is also known also as the Valley of the Moon and is where Star Wars Episode XI: The Rise of Skywalker was shot.
However, the majority of the series is set in London, as Moon Knight’s alter-ego Steven Grant works at the British Museum. This shines a spotlight on its finances.
Budgets of television shows are usually a closely-guarded secret as studios tend to absorb the cost of individual programmes in their overall expenses. However, the costs of shows made in Britain are consolidated in single companies which file publicly-available accounts.
The production companies have code names so that they don’t raise attention when filing for permits to shoot off-site. The Disney subsidiary behind Moon Knight is called Spectorcorp Productions in a nod to the company the hero creates in the comics to fund his crime-fighting activities.
Using a British production company is the first step to benefiting from Britain’s Television Tax Relief scheme, which allows studios to claim a cash rebate of up to 25% of their costs in the country. There is a low threshold as to what constitutes being made in Britain.
At least 10% of the core costs of the production need to relate to activities in Britain. On the face of it, Moon Knight appears to have spent much more than that there as London is showcased extensively in several episodes.
Everything from Tottenham Court Road tube station to the Tower of London and Trafalgar Square appear on-screen along with a steady stream of the capital’s famous red double-decker buses.
However, not a single scene was actually filmed in London as the Covid-19 pandemic closed the doors of Britain’s studios when Disney planned to make Moon Knight there in 2020.
Production was switched from Pinewood Studios in Britain to Pinewood in Atlanta though the crew still filmed on location. In addition to shooting in Jordan, they spent around six months in Hungary which stood in for many of the London locations.
After being enhanced with computer-generated images, viewers couldn’t tell the difference and it still had a magic touch when it came to claiming the tax benefit.
Even though Moon Knight wasn’t filmed in Britain, it was still eligible for the tax credit as the producers spent enough with companies based there.
Visual effects firm Framestore transformed the streets of Hungary into London while theatrical costume supplier FBFX made Moon Knight’s mummy-esque white suit.
To qualify for the tax credit, productions must then pass a points test based on their level of British content, how much they promote British creativity, heritage or diversity, how much filming was done in Britain and how many of the cast and crew are British.
Crucially, the production can earn points by showing Britain on screen, even if it was not actually filmed there.
The key condition is that the production must spend at least $1.2m (£1m) per broadcast hour and Moon Knight passed this with flying colours.
Recently-filed accounts for Spectorcorp Productions reveal that over the two years until the end of September 2021, when filming wrapped, its costs came to $90m (£73.1m).
This gives average spending of $15m (£12.2m) per episode though the tax credit offset $2.2m (£1.8m) of that. The biggest return came from the streaming subscriptions it generated.
Disney has a total of 235.7m subscribers on its books giving it more than any other platform. Although it is tough to identify how many of them joined because of specific shows, their popularity perhaps gives some insight into this.
According to audience analysis firm Samba TV, Moon Knight had the second-highest opening of any Marvel streaming series with 1.8m households in the US watching it over its first five days of streaming on Disney+.
Nielsen adds that Moon Knight was viewed for a total of nearly 3.7bn minutes over its run giving it an average of 12.9m viewed minutes across its run time.
This puts it higher than the tallies for streaming series based on more well-known Marvel characters like Hawkeye and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Despite the popularity of the franchises on Disney+, which also include Star Wars and Indiana Jones, the streaming service still hasn’t turned a profit since its US launch in 2019.
It lost $1.5bn alone in the fourth quarter of this year fuelling the departure of Disney’s chief executive Bob Chapek.
He was replaced last month by its former boss Bob Iger who told staff that “instead of chasing (subscribers) with aggressive marketing and aggressive spend on content, we have to start chasing profitability.”
So although a number of other Marvel characters are set to get their own streaming series, it remains to be seen how many of them will make it to the opening night.
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