Quote Originally Posted by Xyril View Post
You seem to have misunderstood my main points. First, "low expectations" doesn't always mean "low expected value," it could also mean low certainty, but with a high potential upside, in a field where investors can be risk averse. Second, value isn't purely measured in box office revenue. As I already stated, the MCU is a brand. Even if the analysts decided that Black Panther would necessarily be low EV, financially speaking, if those same analysts decided that not giving Black Panther a standalone movie would be a bad idea, and that--in your words--giving it "the budget [that] would have reflect that as a riskier investment" (or as I would say, giving it a noticeably crappier budget than the other MCU movies) would possibly result in fan backlash, then they're going to give Black Panther a good budget.
They could've given it a budget on par with other gambles like Doctor Strange or Ant-Man without causing any kind of backlash like that. Instead they gave it proven-property-sequel money. They wouldn't have done that lightly, that's all I'm saying.

And lord knows the marketing budget (which is counted separately from that of the film) would have been much higher for BP. I didn't see any Kendrick albums or shoe deals for Ant-Man after all.

Quote Originally Posted by Xyril View Post
Look, I'm not without some experience in the field of uncertain decisions involving fairly large amounts of money, and I'm telling you, the smart choices change based on the size of the gambles as a proportion of your total resources. If you're a producer who can afford to invest in only one or two movies at a time, then certainty has a higher priority--getting wiped out doesn't just mean losing a lot of money, it means losing most of your future opportunities to make money. If you're a big enough studio with either a lot of capital on hand, or a tremendous pool of consistent investors, then you can start acting like the hedge fund of movie producers. You can take more high risk, high reward ventures because you're investing in so many that even if a few fail spectacularly, the rest will make good your losses, and then some. You can literally hedge--for example, by investing in a less popular niches that are likely to do well if an unexpected shift tanks the safe bets. More uniquely to mass market industries, they're also in a better position to turn intangible benefits into tangible gains.
Right, hence me agreeing with the tail end of your post (the part I quoted.) We're aligned.