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Producing superhero movies involves significant expenses, largely due to CGI, action sequences, and, surprisingly, the costumes. Striking a balance between functionality, comic accuracy, and realism, superhero suits have evolved considerably from their early designs.
We recently talked about this, and it turns out that one of the Wolverine suits featured briefly in Deadpool & Wolverine cost a staggering $100,000 to create.
Dean: One of our storyboard artists was a huge comic book fan and he gave us a list of, like, ten of them. There was also, and maybe no on really likes to hear this, time and budget issues you have to deal with as well. Here’s a perfect example: the brown and tan, we spent around $100,000 building that suit.
The high cost was eventually clarified: the suit was meticulously hand-crafted to fit Hugh Jackman perfectly.
Dean: Like I said, it’s one of those things that’ll stand the test of time. Just the costumers…it’s all handmade. It’s all done to an inch of Hugh’s body. To shoot it all as well.
Fans were already taken aback by this revelation, especially since the suit lacks any special features or high-tech gadgets. However, Wolverine’s costume is merely a small fraction of the overall cost for superhero attire.
At the extreme end of the price spectrum is DCEU’s Shazam, portrayed by Zachary Levi, whose suit reportedly cost a staggering $1 million to produce.
In an interview with TotalFilm, costume designer Leah Butler, recognized for her work on Chuck and Annabelle: Creation, discussed the considerable cost and effort involved in crafting the suits for Shazam!. She drew inspiration from the New 52 comics, incorporating a hooded cape and Greek and Roman symbolism, while also adding a 3D-printed texture to the fabric.
The exterior suit is a spandex suit that goes over a musculature suit, and each muscle has been sculpted on the body of Zach so it accents and highlights his shape and size. here’s also a ton of electronics involved, as the central bolt and gauntlets light up
There is actually a battery in the back – we luckily had a cape to cover it all up or I don’t know where we would have put all that stuff – and it is remotely lit through a switchboard operator. There is wiring throughout the costume. It’s a 26-volt AA rechargeable battery. It lasts about two hours at full charge.
Butler disclosed that creating the costume took 16 weeks, beginning with a body scan of Zach Levi before he started his rigorous diet and workout plan.
Additionally, a sculptor was used to create a physical model of Levi’s body. Each suit costs over one million dollars, and with ten suits produced, the total expenses exceed the budgets of some Hollywood films.
Each suit costs, oh boy, upwards of a million? We have ten suits,
The cost of superhero suits can vary widely, with Shazam! topping the list at an astonishing $1 million. Other significant prices include Iron Man’s red and gold suit at $325,000, Black Panther at $300,000, and Christian Bale’s Dark Knight suit at $250,000. In contrast, both Wolverine’s brown and tan suit and Batfleck cost around $100,000 each.
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