Disney Reveals The Team Behind ‘Avengers: Doomsday’

Robert Downey Jr. is just one of many people involved in ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ (Photo by Jesse Grant/Getty Images for Disney)

Getty Images for Disney

Disney has revealed how many people were working on the set of its upcoming Marvel superhero team-up movie Avengers: Doomsday just a few weeks before the cameras started rolling.

Doomsday is one of the most crucial films in the 18-year history of Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) for a number of reasons.

Although the MCU is the highest-grossing film franchise of all time, earning more than $30 billion globally across more than 30 films, it has lost its punching power since the onset of the pandemic. The once-bulletproof franchise produced a string of flops and lackluster performances so Disney needs Doomsday to make an impact to demonstrate there is still life left in the superhero genre. It has big boots to fill.

Its predecessor, Avengers: Endgame, became the highest-grossing movie in history with total takings of $2.8 billion when it was released in 2019. Instead of quitting while he was ahead, Marvel Studios’ head honcho Kevin Feige doubled down and implemented a grand plan to try to top the movie.

Essentially, it involved the on screen introduction of what is known as the Multiverse – parallel universes inhabited by characters which previously appeared in unrelated Marvel movies. Iconic hero groups the X-Men and the Fantastic Four are set to team up with the Avengers for the first time on the silver screen in Doomsday giving it a cast list which reads like a roll call for the Oscars.

Academy Award winner Robert Downey Jr. headlines the movie as the evil Doctor Doom, a move which has already attracted significant interest as he played the heroic Iron Man in previous Marvel movies. He will be joined by more than 20 other A Listers including Tom Hiddleston, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby. Its cast is even more high profile than Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, the previous instalments in the series, which cost a combined $1.3 billion to make. With so much at stake, Disney has gone out of its way to try and build up interest in Doomsday and ensure it beats Marvel’s recent record.

First, Disney exclusively played the initial teasers for the movie alongside Avatar: Fire and Ash which was expected to be the highest-grossing film of 2025 but ended up third on the list. Disney recently launched the first full-length trailer for Doomsday at CinemaCon in Las Vegas but didn’t release it online in an attempt to amp up the anticipation.

Instead, as this report forecast, uncannily-realistic AI footage filled the void and the public is still waiting for Disney to release the trailer officially. Meanwhile, Doomsday is reportedly undergoing extensive reshoots and additional photography to give it more muscle. It takes more than the wave of a magic wand to bring it to life.

Like the previous two Avengers movies, Doomsday is being made in the United Kingdom and there is good reason for this. Studios filming there benefit from the government’s Audio-Visual Expenditure Credit which gives them a cash reimbursement of up to 25.5% of the money they spend in the U.K. It comes with a catch.

To qualify for the reimbursement, at least 10% of the core costs of the production need to relate to activities in the U.K. and in order to demonstrate this to the government, studios set up a separate Film Production Company (FPC) there for each picture they make in the country.

The companies usually have code names so that they don’t raise attention with fans when filing for permits to film on location. The Disney subsidiary behind Doomsday is called For All Time Productions UK in a nod to its theme of converging timelines.

Each FPC has to meet strict disclosure regulations including filing detailed annual financial statements. Although Doomsday’s FPC hasn’t lodged them yet this year, it has filed an in-depth personnel breakdown which is obligatory as it employs more than 250 people.

The information about Doomsday was collected on April 5, 2025, just 23 days before filming began at Pinewood Studios outside London. It shows that if the hourly pay is ranked from highest to lowest, the middle figure, known as the median, is 24% lower for women than men. The documents also reveal that women represent 16% of employees in the highest paid quartile but 50% of employees in the lowest payment bracket.

On a bigger picture level, 38% of all staff were women and a total of 612 people were employed in the UK to work on the production of the movie with the majority of them “engaged via contracts which have expired upon completion of production,” according to the documents.

This total sharply increased when principal photography began. That is clear on reviewing filings for other films such as Disney’s live action version of Snow White which had 958 UK employees 22 days after filming began in 2022. It doesn’t stop there as the live action Little Mermaid movie’s ranks swelled to a massive 2,764 people three months before it wrapped. In contrast, a few weeks before the curtain came down on filming the 2023 MCU streaming series Secret Invasion it only had 266 employees making it seem like Doomsday already has a blockbuster tally.

Of course, as the old adage goes, it is quality not quantity that counts. There is little doubt that the biggest hurdle in Doomsday’s way is the declining interest in the MCU. Endgame was the culmination of 22 pictures and moviegoers had to watch the majority of them to fully understand it. However, millions of people did just that as the MCU was on a roll.

It’s a different story now as so many of the MCU movies have flopped at the box office. Instead of cutting back on the content to make it easier for viewers to keep up, Disney increased its output by launching a string of Marvel streaming shows during the pandemic. The more content there was, the harder it was for fans to keep up and the more it put them off watching the next movies and shows in case they didn’t understand them.

This trend became such a concern that Marvel created a sub-brand of streaming show which didn’t require any previous knowledge to understand. Doomsday certainly doesn’t fit into that category as its directors – Anthony and Joe Russo – have confirmed that it follows on directly from Endgame. Its multiverse theme adds to its complexity and Marvel’s most similar movies in recent years have been a mixed bag.

In 2022, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness grossed $955.8 million worldwide which was respectable but less than the billion dollar mark that Marvel’s movies routinely hit before the pandemic.

In contrast, 2024’s Deadpool & Wolverine generated $1.3 billion and teamed up many of the most obscure X-Men and the Avengers. However, its selling point was the trademark humor of Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool character who at times openly mocks Marvel’s multiverse strategy in the movie. It appealed to the very adults who have become disenchanted by the proliferation of MCU productions.

There is no indication at all that Doomsday shares this tongue-in-cheek characteristic so it appears that whether the movie is a hit or a miss rests squarely on Downey Jr’s shoulders. Marvel has managed to keep under wraps the explanation of how his character has switched from being a hero to a villain but it is keeping fans intrigued, especially as Doctor Doom is an eastern-European making him the antithesis of the all-American Iron Man. If Downey Jr can convincingly pull off this performance then it really will be heroic.