What do we know about Brave New World and Snow White's costs based on Disney's Jan-March 2025 10-Q?

The core data here comes from the 2025 Jan-Mar Quarterly report and the Press release accompanying the report.

The press release's conversation about Content licensing section showed an increase in revenue from 1.4B to 2.1B Year over year and operating income changing from a loss of 18M to a gain of $153M

> The improvement in operating results was due to:

• Higher TV/VOD distribution results due to an increase in sales of episodic content including an impact from the timing of episodes delivered
• An increase in home entertainment distribution results driven by the performance of Moana 2 in the current quarter
• Theatrical distribution results were comparable to the prior-year quarter, as the carryover performance of first quarter releases, Mufasa: The Lion King and Moana 2, was largely offset by the results of second quarter releases, Snow White and Captain America: Brave New World, including the costs of their initial marketing campaigns.** There were no significant titles released the prior-year quarter.

* Disney generated 646M worth of theatrical rental revenue in the first 3 months of 2025 versus 123M in 2024 (so +$523M for 2025)

So, basically, ~$500M worth of costs are placed on Disney's Q1 balance sheet related to the release of these two films.

• Deadline claims $111M P&A for Snow White and something vaguely like $100M for Brave New World but let's actually call that $250M ("Selling, general, administrative and other costs increased $238 million, to $620 million from $382 million, due to higher theatrical marketing costs." + a 20M increase in "other expenses" attributed to higher theatrical distribution costs)
• Snow White made ~68% of its box office gross during this quarter (so let's call that 2/3rds)
• Brave New World made >95% of its box office gross during this quarter so I'm going to call that 100%.
• 10% of Moana 2's WWBO made this quarter
• 50% of Mufasa's WWBO made this quarter [though I imagine this is above expectations]

So if I'm reading this correctly, this implies

250M = [Snow White Budget]*2/3*[projected theatrical revenue/overall Revenue] + [Brave New World Budget]*[projected theatrical revenue/overall Revenue] +[Mufasa budget]/2*[projected theatrical revenue/overall Revenue] +[Moana 2budget]/2 *[projected theatrical revenue/overall Revenue]

That's the hard stuff, but given thunderbolts just came out, let's go a bit further into the void.

https://preview.redd.it/spuk139a3dze1.jpg?width=728&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e2635bb85493a68baba2a9e8f9696c25fcddb65b

Deadline estimated The Marvels would make 40% of its revenue theatrically and argues Snow White will made ~34% of its revenue theatrically a/k/a 1/3rd. So if we use 1/3rd and 40% as 2 baseline numbers (Moana 2's a small enough part of this that I'm going to skip caveats about merch), Mufasa Deadline claims Mufasa's theatrical revenue = 52% of Ultimate revenue (excluding merch, parks, etc.) so I'm also going to use that. That implies a ~$50M Q1 production budget amortized cost. Because Moana 2's only having ~10% of its WWBO run let in early 2025, if you ignored VOD costs and just grabbed theatrical, that's ~5M.

So let's say that means ~190M in theatrical distribution specific costs need to be accounted for between Brave New World and Snow White.

• Using theatrical = 40% assumptions across the board yields $144M in costs (using stated budgets) while 33% yields 120M.

I just don't think that's close enough to handwave away as a result of these clumsy assumptions I'm making.

• If we instead increase the budgets by $50M each (220/320) you get ~$175M in costs amortized at 40% or 145M at 33%.

• If we up BNW to 250M and up SW to 300M, we get 180 at 40% and 150 at 33%

I just think those types of numbers make more conceptual sense even if the assumptions I'm making here are somewhat messy and easily open to critique.