Talent 5/5 Effects 4/5 Locations 4/5 Estimated total $630m The Crown Plus, while it tended to save money by killing as many leads as possible, by the end it still had five actors whose pay rises had left them making $500,000 per episode each. While late-period Thrones did not skimp on its effects, the main reasons for its swollen budget were old-school: it sent hordes of performers and a huge crew to far-flung locations (Malta, Iceland, Croatia) and kept them there for months. Critical and audience acclaim helped to increase worldwide revenues and create demand for further giant rumbles, so that by the time the eighth and final season aired, with its constant war and explicit dragon-on-dragon violence, episodes were costing more like $15m. The turning point came with the season two spectacular Blackwater, for which HBO are said to have shelled out a then-extraordinary $8m. The flagship for the whole bigger-than-film, global-phenomenon era of telly, Thrones started out costing a reported $5m per episode, although showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss still complained that some of their planned apocalyptic battles had been replaced with dialogue scenes due to a lack of cash. Here are six shows that have changed TV’s financial game. Is this sustainable? If there is a crash coming, it is some way off.
#The last dragon movie budget expensive series#
As for HBO itself, the $85bn acquisition of its parent company Time Warner by AT&T last year means the cable network has money to burn on its own Netflix-killer, streaming site HBO Max, and it is still pumping out visibly expensive series such as Westworld and Succession on US cable.
Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes have both been paid megabucks in the hope that they can come up with a global smash to match HBO’s Game of Thrones. It is set to splash $15bn on content in 2019, a figure boosted by the streamer’s new focus on big deals for big talents. Netflix, meanwhile, is still in its “world domination now, balanced books later” phase. There is much more at stake here than winning ratings battles or scooping up Emmys.
In the famous words of Amazon head Jeff Bezos: “When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes.” Apple is giving away a year of TV+ to people who buy a new iPhone or other Apple device. The inflation is intensified by the fact that, for many of the companies entering the streaming race, getting punters to become captive members of the brand family is more important than directly making a profit from TV. For comparison, the BBC’s drama commissioning guide lists £1m ($1.3m) as its top price for an hour of “premium” drama. Yet both will be put in the shade if, as is rumoured, Apple’s upcoming Band of Brothers sequel Masters of the Air breaks the $20m per episode barrier if it doesn’t, Amazon’s megabucks Lord of the Rings prequel almost certainly will. Its two big openers, The Morning Show and See, are both thought to cost around the same as the final season of Game of Thrones. Netflix’s other big new rival is Apple TV+, which debuted worldwide earlier this month.
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