Think Hugh Jackman’s Brown & Tan Wolverine Suit Was Pricey? You Won’t Believe the Cost of Shazam’s Costume

Superhero movies cost a lot to make. Primarily due to CGI, action, and, as it turns out the costumes. There’s a fine balance between being functional, comic-accurate, and realistic, and the superhero suits have really evolved since their humble beginnings.

This is something we discussed recently. As it turns out one of the Wolverine suits in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ that is seen only briefly cost $100K to make.

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.

It was eventually explained why it cost so much to make. Apparently, it’s been hand-crafted to fit Hugh Jackman:

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 shocked to find out that piece of information considering that the suit is nothing special and doesn’t have fancy gadgets or electronics. But as it turns out Wolverine’s suit is only a small fraction of how much a superhero costume can actually cost.

The wild end of the price spectrum belongs to DCEU’s Shazam, played by Zachary Levi, as his suit apparently cost $1 million to make:

In an interview with TotalFilm, costume designer Leah Butler, known for her work on ‘Chuck’ and ‘Annabelle: Creation,’ discussed the significant cost and effort involved in creating the suits for ‘Shazam!.’ She drew inspiration from the New 52 comics, incorporating a hooded cape and Greek and Roman symbolism, and added 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 revealed that it took 16 weeks to create the costume, starting with a body scan of Zach Levi before he began his strict diet and workout regimen.

They also created a physical model of Levi’s body using a sculptor. The total cost for each suit exceeds one million dollars, and with ten suits made, the expenses surpass the total budget of some Hollywood productions.

Each suit costs, oh boy, upwards of a million? We have ten suits,

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The cost of superhero suits varies significantly, with ‘Shazam!’ leading at an impressive $1 million. Other notable costs 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 comparison, Wolverine’s brown and tan suit and Batfleck each cost $100,000.

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