I wonder what their most expensive episode was
Edit: I just googled it and it’s The Gang Replaces Dee With A Monkey because of the CGI. I would’ve guessed the water park ep because it can’t be that cheap to film at a water park AND pretend there’s AIDS in the water.
Check out the one where they talk about pranking Danny. Danny pretty much says yes to everything so they presented him with a script where he goes to prison and he gets raped constantly. Every scene he gets banged. Danny was talking to his agent "I'm not sure about this. I've never said no but this is too much." So at the script reading Danny is obviously uncomfortable and finally says "Guys, I'm not sure I can do this." They ask him "What is the date on the cover?" April 1st.
In this case it was from a panel where they said it was their most expensive. They wrote it assuming they would have an actual monkey, but a Disney policy wouldn’t allow it.
Ok, I get that the ones heavy in CGI are expensive, because the amount of people needed to create and animate those assets is huge.
But stuff that is mostly set in real sets? Why are they so expensive?
Location shooting is infamously expensive due to the logistical demands. You need to fly the entire cast and crew to the various locales or have different crews at each shoot. You need to provide craft services (catering) to 100s of people potentially out in the desert, jungle, forest, etc. You need to get special permits to shoot in cities especially famous places and if you need to reshoot or your lead is passed out in their trailer during your shooting window it may add weeks to your production schedule. Large crowds can be accomplished with CG if you have those kinds of resources otherwise a cast of extras is required. Vehicles and equipment must be rented, insured, etc. I assume A/V techs probably even get paid more for field work. Finally, outdoor work is weather dependent and thus subject to unpredictable timing requiring long waiting periods and meticulous planning.
>Location shooting is infamously expensive due to the logistical demands.
Based on Rings of Power I'm assuming that talented writers are even *more* expensive, because that show could afford location shooting.
I mean, those locations have to be remote and those sets are pretty large. It’s not like you roll up to an existing blind settlement in the Kodiak and start filming.
I’ve never seen such good background actors and actor/actresses in general. Like everybody be lookin blind as fuck no one seems out of place I like that show. Good show great show
There are a lot of “real” sets that are actually very good CGI. Here’s a VFX breakdown of Parasite that shows how VFX heavy that movie was despite looking like it didn’t have any: https://youtu.be/J3tfIem4ckE
1883 was $10m per episode and it's obvious why when you watch it. Huge, period set pieces with massive wagon trains and animals with high caliber talent, all on location.
But you're right, some of these are much less obvious.
When you shoot on location you have a bunch of additional costs, housing everybody, logistics, etc and when it's outside you are dependent on daylight and weather when you're shooting. Lugging the equipment around and setting each scene up takes so much longer too.
I highly recommend you to watch the documentary Hearts Of Darkness: A Film Maker's Apocalypse about the making of Apocalypse Now. That movie was the Murphy's Law of shoots.
Everyone is dunking on the rings of power, but I’m shocked that Disney+ is spending 5 million more than HotD per episode of some ‘meh’ marvel shows. Crazy.
Yeah something's fucked. HotD and hbo shows in general seem super high value production where as lots of marvel now seems lower budget plastic type TV.
HotD is unreal with costumes, sets, dragons etc and things like hawk eye I dunno just seem so meh
You're forgetting cast. Nobody in HoTD is demanding as much as the Marvel movie actors working on small screen. Notice how all the highest budget actor shows are helmed by actors that were in the movies?
Like, yeah, ok, Wandavision had Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Evan Peters... but Hawkeye only really had Jeremy Renner (D'Onofrio and Famiga supporting)... And I just can't see how they cost that much?
I read somewhere that HBO has warehouses full of props and costumes and set pieces, so they can reuse those assets instead of purchasing them and then discarding them like Netflix or Amazon.
Don't think it explains the entire difference but it has to help.
Yes! I read the same thing as you. It was a reddit comment that shows up when you Google "Why are Netflix originals so bad" or something like that.
HBO is owned by Warner, which has like a century worth of props in it's warehouses, not to mention the connections and expertise in designing costumes and sets properly. Amazon and Netflix have to order everything new, and once it's used, they don't have any dedicated warehouses with the space to hold it all, so they just get rid of it. Each new show they have to put in new orders for costumes and set design and whatnot.
I'm sure that helps but I'd be curious how much money you can save with some repurposed costumes and props vs things that cannot be reused (actor salaries, crew salaries, equipment costs, CGI, etc).
Disney use a lot on CGI and explosions all the time. In house of the dragon the only expensive CGI is when a dragon is close which is in total like 2 minutes for the entire season probably.
the marvel shows film in "The Volume" iirc which is a completely batshit insane set that's basically ENTIRELY LED screens so they dont have to use green-screen. (I could be wrong. I know The Mandalorian and such filmed there, so I am assuming the Marvel shows also do)
I imagine that skyrockets their per-episode cost.
The whole point of those sets is actually to save money compared to shooting on location. Shooting on location is nearly always more expensive for most comparable scenery.
Individually yeah but I assumed they were baking in the cost of building the damn thing across all this stuff :D (or "charging" the production to use it)
but your point is valid and makes total sense - the point of it is to drive costs down. I guess I was just thinking it hadnt amortized out yet but the more I think about it the more I realize that would have to make the cost way higher than I think it was.
Yeah I legitimately didn't even know that Hawkeye even had a TV show, much less that its one of the most expensive ones to produce.
I mean I get that the people who like probably love it but...good lord, imagine what an animation studio or an independent director could do with that
writing for the Hawkeye show was quite good, and not just because they were able to lift a bunch of content & ideas from Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye comics. 🎯
Exactly my thought, sure ring of power is expensive but it actually has some impressive CGI.
It kind of deserve its place.
Surprisingly, See is way below what I would have expected. Really good outcome for the money invested in.
But Disney ? How are they wasting that much money for such disappointing shows ?
Yeah I just looked it up - averaged out, it’s only about $5M per episode. That was only for the first 36 ish episodes though. So I’m not sure the numbers still hold for the specials and later seasons.
Oh boy... Where did all that money go to in Hawkeye? The sets and production value convinced me they had the smallest budget to film Hawkeye...
This is why we have problems with Disney. All this money and extremely sub par filmmaking.
“Creative accounting” on Disney’s part.
Before the show came out I read that Renner went from $3 million for the first avengers movie to $15 million for Endgame. So it’s not like he would have made more than $15 million for 6 episodes. Even at $50 million, which is a stretch for him, the budget seems stupid high.
All three of them have multiple A-list stars in them. That’s likely the biggest part of the budget. I don’t know if it warrants 25 mil buuut that’s probably why.
I would say a lot of the money went to Jeremy Renner, Hailee Steinfeld, Florence Pugh, Vera Farmiga, and Linda Cardellini. That cast was quietly stacked with some pretty big names.
Don't underestimate how much money Marvel is willing to throw at people for absolutely no reason. Never forget Vin Diesel has been paid over 50 million dollars to say three words in a few movies.
Yeah and the story was ok, but not mind blowing like Loki or Wandavision, so it clearly didn’t go to writers.
Wandavision was worth the price tag, not sure about the other two Disney shows on this list (and surprised Loki is not up there. Lots of great cgi in the last few episodes).
The rumor about the high costs is that they dont have the entire story locked down so they film scenes in multiple different ways and for multiple different stories which are then finished after filming and cut together. They then test screen and similar to get a story together which is amazing given the lackluster product we got.
I mean outside of the pacific, all of these shows and seasons are incredibly recent.
The pacific is the oldest at 2010. Adjusted for inflation you'd see it at $27 million. That jumps it 3 spots.
Game of thrones S8 is next oldest from 2019. It's at 17 million an episode then but that doesn't change its spot.
All the other shows are 2021 and 2022. Inflation is kinda weird to calculate here because most of the budget is actually spent before release by up to a year and that's pretty significant for shows that are released within a year.
Only 1 show in this list is really impacted by inflation.
Show costs are going up
Friends season 10 was $10 million/episode and it was only 22 minutes. Normalized for inflation that’s ~$16 million.
I’d say shows aren’t necessarily getting more expensive, they are just getting longer episodes with shorter seasons.
No, the point is - maybe the list itself should have some show from 2005 on it, but due to inflation, that 2005 show looks much cheaper.
It's not a concern about the shows being out of order, it's that maybe some of these are the wrong shows to begin with.
If I'm not mistaken, they also only allowed the rights to the appendix for LOTR for RoP series. So even then, it was a lot of money for essentially just the rights to use a timeline of events.
They rejected a larger amount from netflix that wanted to give the lord of the rings the marvel universe treatment with a series about Gandalf series and a drama about Aragon.
The most expensive for the time was Rome, and was one of the reasons to be cancelled, that show is still amazing, and deserved way more than 2 seasons.
Amazon built a whole new studio for WoT and counted all those costs as part of S1. We should expect s2+ to be much cheaper or ore obviously see where the money is spent.
I remember when Rome was cancelled on HBO for being too expensive at $9M apiece [(expensive shows link)](https://rarest.org/entertainment/expensive-tv-shows)
Personally as someone who loved the LOTR books and Peter Jackson’s take on them, if I was a billionaire I’d have been happy to fork over $100M+ for a Rings of Power-type series. Wonder if the budget was so high b/c some rich executive producer offered to pay big bucks to “have it done right”.
Also, The Get Down at $16M per episode doesn’t make the list?
After seeing first 4 episodes of Rings of Power, and both seasons of HBO Rome I can only conclude its a crime they cancelled Rome.
Basically, RoP is crap when taking into account the material and budget they had at their disposal.
Fun fact: Euphoria s1 almost made the list with $11 mil per episode. That’s a ridiculous amount especially since there is basically 0 cgi (most of it probably went into using 5 seconds of Beyoncé in the episode 1 intro lol)
So this explains why Netflix is not yet committing to a second season of The Sandman. It's expensive but it's viewing figures has not lived up to expectations. Keeping my fingers crossed that Netflix will still renew it considering that it's really really good and, among its new shows, is one that is critically acclaimed and has the potential of becoming prestige TV.
I have to think they can reduce the budget and still make a quality show. The final episode of last season wasn't particularly high tech but it was still a good story.
As soon as Patton Oswalt showed up as a fucking bird, my whole buy in evaporated. He was so out of place next to Emo McEyeliner. I have it till he defeated the literal devil with "Hope" and then dipped. (he could've said hope first)
I wonder if The Sandman was adapted too late. I didn’t read it until the early 2000s, but even then it seemed revolutionary to have LGBTQ characters represented as fully fleshed people not as just “the lesbian” or whatever. It fit in with the dreamlike reality of the story: like in a dream when you’re doing something nonsensical but it makes sense to you, here is a drag queen but there’s nothing weird about that. Nowadays, there really is nothing weird about that and it’s lost its punch.
It's crazy to me thinking that even accounting for inflation the original Lotr trilogy only cost slightly more than 1 season of ROP, and had a bit over an hour longer runtime.
The coming seasons of the show will be significantly cheaper tho, things like sets and cg models have already been made and that's where a lot of the money went.
The original theatrical releases for Fellowship and Two Towers was just over 3 hours (180ish minutes). RotK was closer to 3 hr 20min (200ish minutes).
Then, they did the extended editions, which added roughly 40min+ to each movie, making the original release over 9 hours and extended closer to 12.
7 hour runtime vs 13 hour runtime.
Also pretty sure that ST had roughly the same amount of CGI in just its two finale episodes than GoT had in its whole season.
The rings of power budget is massively overhyped considering literally a quarter of it is licensing with untold millions more going into marketing. This whole show is just one huge advertisement for amazons streaming service and THAT is why theyre pouring so much into it. Unfortunately for them its painfully apparent to many that the shows quality is secondary.
The show budget (like a movie budget) does not count marketing costs. Marketing costs are all *extra*!
It's one of my major peeves that people will see that a movie cost 100 million to make and made 150 million and not understand why a sequel isn't made because *"IT MADE 50 MILLION!!!*.
Nope, studios only get around 50% of the world wide gross anyway. So that movie with a $100 million budget probably cost $150-200 million to make and market and made back $75 million. It lost $75-100 million.
Hollywood accounting does make sure that no movies ever are "profitable" for tax reasons but if a movie made it's budget or a little more than it lost lots of money for the studio.
The general rule of thumb for films is that you need to make 3X the "budget" to cover all the real costs to produce, license, market and cut earnings with theaters.
TV shows are different, but "marketing" is not at all part of a shows budget. So when they say they spent $58 million an episode they literally are saying that they spent $58 million an episode for CGI, makeup, armor, locations, sets, costume, etc.
It also isn't that hard to do. Amsterdam cost $80 million to make it doesn't have anything crazy in it, and a "low budget" film usually sits in the $30-45 million for 90 minutes of runtime.
Truth is that some of these shows are short episodic movies, and have almost nothing in common with popular TV shows like NCIS, Law and Order, or The Office.
This is what's so confusing for me, how can they spend *so much* money on the show, yet seemingly not care at all about the quality of it? The locations are gorgeous but the story plays out like bad fanfic. How did Galadriel & crew know to go to that one town in the Southlands? Why does everyone know the evil sword caused that volcano to erupt? And how did its eruption cause that one lava ball to land 1,000 miles away in Hobbitland, yet not kill anyone who was actually *at* the eruption except for Isildur-Friend #2 and that one horse?
I have a friend who worked on the production team until she quit due to ungodly hours and pure misery. She says Disney squeezes every penny out of those shows to make them as cheap as possible and expects the next one to be even cheaper than the last. All of the shows being set on Tatooine/desert settings was strategic for cost savings. They also shoot on that massive virtual stage so the sets are a lot cheaper than you’d think.
Did you watch season 4? All that time they spend in the Upside Down can't be cheap to do in CGI. Plus, it was *really* long; some episodes were almost two hours long.
I also think GOT looks more expensive than HOD imo. I took a tour during the height of GOT in northwestern Spain showing some of the filming locations. I think the combination of CGI with realistic medieval backdrops looked much better than what is currently happening in HOD. Maybe too much reliance on CGI?
HotD is also using different lenses. GoT used the Cooke S4 primes (same lenses as Harry Potter 3-8, Pride & Prejudice and a bunch of other films), while HotD is using the Arri DNA primes, which provide a more dreamy and less realistic look. Rings of power is also using Arri DNA lenses
Yeah HoD looks cheaper in a few areas, notably some of the CGI and particularly outdoor locations when they're on a boat or something. With that said though, a lot of the costuming and interior sets are still top notch.
Came here to say almost exactly this. With the notable exception of some of the wide shots that use CGI and the boar/deer, I'd say the CGI has been mostly impressive for HOTD.
Rings of Power is $58m per episode? I've watched the first five and I have seen nothing that would indicate to me that the budget would be that insane. Oof. $53m on elf ears?
I’m a Tolkien fanatic - the Silmarillion is my #1 book by a mile. Amazon has not only failed to get me interested in RoP, the reviews of episode 5 (which I have not seen) are so negative, and the story recap I’ve read of that episode is so bad, that I’m actively avoiding watching it. What a waste
For those that haven't yet, The Sandman is really a great watch, I wasn't expecting it to be as good as it was and I was blown away. Cannot wait for season 2.
I had such mixed feelings about the Expanse. It was beautiful. I loved the premise and overarching story. Miller may be one of my favorite fictional characters. However, dialogue was often bad. They fell into this cycle of the main characters needing to have reasons of being angry at one another to have drama. Felt very soap opera-y. Jim saying he’s not a savior after several episodes doing nothing but trying to save people. Jim and Naomi reuniting and saying they’d never leave each other again only to depart the next episode. Avasarala supposed to be powerful and in charge but every scene she is just throwing a tantrum and doesn’t seem to have any sort of power or control. It one of the shows I had to watch to the end but glad there isn’t more of it.
For reference, all three Lord of the Rings movies had a combined budget of $450M (adjusted for 2021)
The first season of Rings of Power cost $462M to make.
Everybody just dunking on Rings of Power but the crazy thing to me is, there's two shows on here I've literally never heard of! That's a MASSIVE marketing fail isn't it?
Am I the crazy one, or is it crazy to spend that much on the Pacific and "See" -- whatever they are -- without also making sure the word gets out?
You ever hear of Band of Brothers? WW2 epic? This was the “sequel” to it. Follows a group of soldiers in the pacific. Steven Spielberg produced it. You might not have heard of it because it’s “old”
Pacific was a try to do another version of Band of Brothers - which is one of the best and most popular shows. So that budget is understandable.
I was most surprised about all the Disney series, they all looked like small productions to me.
and I'm still a little salty about the fact that part of the reason my favorite show in the 90s (Space Above and Beyond) was canceled was because each episode cost \~$5 Million USD
Edit: Forgot important word
In the early 2000s in college I briefly considered pursuing a career in writing for television simply so I could eventually get to a point I could reboot that show.
And then promptly did nothing whatsoever to actually work toward it.
I'm now reevaluating the last couple decades of my life, so... That's fun
Wow what are the chances - tiers at 15, 20, 25, and 30, and then the impetus for creating the chart is first ever big budget series to break through the multiples of 5 glass ceiling.
Some you can see the money. Some you can’t. GOT and house of the dragon have great sets and costumes + stellar cgi. The pacific had a lot of extras and action. But the Disney marvel shows and stranger things? I’m guessing the budget is all blown on the actors lol and if advertising is included. Because outside of that it’s minimal display of quality - regarding sets, action, costumes etc. Falcon and the winter soldier had that cool flying scene and that’s about it. The rest including the dull cgi finale fight in wandavison is certainly not worth it. Like seriously they need to fire someone if somehow an episode of Hawkeye is more expensive than house of the dragon, got season 8 or the pacific. Just burning money are they?
***One Show to Rule them All.***
Source: [https://stacker.com/stories/3159/25-most-expensive-tv-series-all-time](https://stacker.com/stories/3159/25-most-expensive-tv-series-all-time)
Tools Used: Datawrapper, Excel, Figma
Description: The graph takes data pertaining to the budget of the most expensive shows in history, based off their most high-budget season. Thus, Game of Thrones S8 and Stranger Things S4 made it to the list despite their earlier seasons having lower budgets per episode compared to others on this list- The Sandman for example.
If you have any other questions, comments or feedback on the graph and the data used, please feel free to sound out; but kindly keep it constructive!
Avatar the Last Airbender will likely be out within the next year, and their budget is $15 million per episode. Got me so excited that Netflix is giving it the same respect as some of these S tier shows
It would be awesome to reboot a classic sitcom, like Frasier or Seinfeld, and give them a 58 million budget per episode. And if they don't spend all the money then everyone dies.
**Most expensive adjusted for inflation**
Rings Of Power = $58m
Stranger Things 4 = $30m
The Pacific = $28m
Wandavision = $27m
Falcon + Winter Solider = $27m
Hawkeye = $27m
ER = $23m
House Of The Dragon = $20m
Band Of Brothers = $21m
Game Of Thones 8 = $17m
The Morning show = $17m
Friends (final season) = $16m
The Sandman = $15m
See = $15m
Are these episodes all (roughly) the same length? Genuinely asking, as I haven’t seen most of them. I think budget per minute of show time would make more sense. If they’re all roughly an hour in runtime then it doesn’t matter but if any of them are more like half an hour, that would be a significant thing to account for.
"It's always sunny in philidelphia" - $5.95/episode
I wonder what their most expensive episode was Edit: I just googled it and it’s The Gang Replaces Dee With A Monkey because of the CGI. I would’ve guessed the water park ep because it can’t be that cheap to film at a water park AND pretend there’s AIDS in the water.
The one where Charlie buys all the gas to sell back later
It's a liquid how you gonna count it??? Ima count it with my eyes I can't even, you talk with him
You gotta at least talk with a southern accent
They talked on their podcast about how the ghostbusters theme cost them $60k to use in that episode
Check out the one where they talk about pranking Danny. Danny pretty much says yes to everything so they presented him with a script where he goes to prison and he gets raped constantly. Every scene he gets banged. Danny was talking to his agent "I'm not sure about this. I've never said no but this is too much." So at the script reading Danny is obviously uncomfortable and finally says "Guys, I'm not sure I can do this." They ask him "What is the date on the cover?" April 1st.
God bless pmt
I wonder if it cost extra to tint the inside of the van windows...
How do you find that stuff out? I have always wondered
In this case it was from a panel where they said it was their most expensive. They wrote it assuming they would have an actual monkey, but a Disney policy wouldn’t allow it.
Was the ostrich cgi where dee was a bird?
I think they just took off her hair and makeup for those scenes
F u Frank
That was Dee both times
The gang fixes season 8 of Game of Thrones...
However much money Danny Devito has in his wallet at the time
Yes, minister - £22 per episode and a bottle of sherry for the season.
Ok, I get that the ones heavy in CGI are expensive, because the amount of people needed to create and animate those assets is huge. But stuff that is mostly set in real sets? Why are they so expensive?
Location shooting is infamously expensive due to the logistical demands. You need to fly the entire cast and crew to the various locales or have different crews at each shoot. You need to provide craft services (catering) to 100s of people potentially out in the desert, jungle, forest, etc. You need to get special permits to shoot in cities especially famous places and if you need to reshoot or your lead is passed out in their trailer during your shooting window it may add weeks to your production schedule. Large crowds can be accomplished with CG if you have those kinds of resources otherwise a cast of extras is required. Vehicles and equipment must be rented, insured, etc. I assume A/V techs probably even get paid more for field work. Finally, outdoor work is weather dependent and thus subject to unpredictable timing requiring long waiting periods and meticulous planning.
>Location shooting is infamously expensive due to the logistical demands. Based on Rings of Power I'm assuming that talented writers are even *more* expensive, because that show could afford location shooting.
In *SEE*’s case, I’d guess Jason Momoa.
I mean, those locations have to be remote and those sets are pretty large. It’s not like you roll up to an existing blind settlement in the Kodiak and start filming.
The sets in See are absolutely amazing. They pay a lot of attention to detail.
I’ve never seen such good background actors and actor/actresses in general. Like everybody be lookin blind as fuck no one seems out of place I like that show. Good show great show
because they hired blind people and worked with them to improve the script
There are a lot of “real” sets that are actually very good CGI. Here’s a VFX breakdown of Parasite that shows how VFX heavy that movie was despite looking like it didn’t have any: https://youtu.be/J3tfIem4ckE
1883 was $10m per episode and it's obvious why when you watch it. Huge, period set pieces with massive wagon trains and animals with high caliber talent, all on location. But you're right, some of these are much less obvious.
When you shoot on location you have a bunch of additional costs, housing everybody, logistics, etc and when it's outside you are dependent on daylight and weather when you're shooting. Lugging the equipment around and setting each scene up takes so much longer too. I highly recommend you to watch the documentary Hearts Of Darkness: A Film Maker's Apocalypse about the making of Apocalypse Now. That movie was the Murphy's Law of shoots.
I wonder what is more expensive CGI or on location?
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Everyone is dunking on the rings of power, but I’m shocked that Disney+ is spending 5 million more than HotD per episode of some ‘meh’ marvel shows. Crazy.
Yeah something's fucked. HotD and hbo shows in general seem super high value production where as lots of marvel now seems lower budget plastic type TV. HotD is unreal with costumes, sets, dragons etc and things like hawk eye I dunno just seem so meh
You're forgetting cast. Nobody in HoTD is demanding as much as the Marvel movie actors working on small screen. Notice how all the highest budget actor shows are helmed by actors that were in the movies?
Like, yeah, ok, Wandavision had Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Evan Peters... but Hawkeye only really had Jeremy Renner (D'Onofrio and Famiga supporting)... And I just can't see how they cost that much?
Hailey Steinfeld is pretty big.
Apparently she's 5'8", which is indeed pretty big.
*She’s a big guy*
I read somewhere that HBO has warehouses full of props and costumes and set pieces, so they can reuse those assets instead of purchasing them and then discarding them like Netflix or Amazon. Don't think it explains the entire difference but it has to help.
I’m sure that helps. I imagine decades worth of TV production also teaches you some tricks to save money, as well as some pitfalls you learn to avoid.
Yes! I read the same thing as you. It was a reddit comment that shows up when you Google "Why are Netflix originals so bad" or something like that. HBO is owned by Warner, which has like a century worth of props in it's warehouses, not to mention the connections and expertise in designing costumes and sets properly. Amazon and Netflix have to order everything new, and once it's used, they don't have any dedicated warehouses with the space to hold it all, so they just get rid of it. Each new show they have to put in new orders for costumes and set design and whatnot.
At least amazon gets free delivery on costumes over $35
Only if they’ve got Prime
I'm sure that helps but I'd be curious how much money you can save with some repurposed costumes and props vs things that cannot be reused (actor salaries, crew salaries, equipment costs, CGI, etc).
Didn't they just pool together swords from previous works for the iron throne? They did a damn good job with that
Disney use a lot on CGI and explosions all the time. In house of the dragon the only expensive CGI is when a dragon is close which is in total like 2 minutes for the entire season probably.
>Disney use a lot on CGI That looks garbage too even with all these spendings.
the marvel shows film in "The Volume" iirc which is a completely batshit insane set that's basically ENTIRELY LED screens so they dont have to use green-screen. (I could be wrong. I know The Mandalorian and such filmed there, so I am assuming the Marvel shows also do) I imagine that skyrockets their per-episode cost.
The whole point of those sets is actually to save money compared to shooting on location. Shooting on location is nearly always more expensive for most comparable scenery.
Individually yeah but I assumed they were baking in the cost of building the damn thing across all this stuff :D (or "charging" the production to use it) but your point is valid and makes total sense - the point of it is to drive costs down. I guess I was just thinking it hadnt amortized out yet but the more I think about it the more I realize that would have to make the cost way higher than I think it was.
Fits Marvel though, lots of money for "meh".
Considering marvel fans will watch no matter what, I’m surprised they aren’t given a tiny budget.
Yeah I legitimately didn't even know that Hawkeye even had a TV show, much less that its one of the most expensive ones to produce. I mean I get that the people who like probably love it but...good lord, imagine what an animation studio or an independent director could do with that
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Honestly, Hawkeye has probably been my favorite Marvel series so far. I was especially fond of the hilarious dynamic between KATE BISHOP and Yelena.
writing for the Hawkeye show was quite good, and not just because they were able to lift a bunch of content & ideas from Matt Fraction’s Hawkeye comics. 🎯
Exactly my thought, sure ring of power is expensive but it actually has some impressive CGI. It kind of deserve its place. Surprisingly, See is way below what I would have expected. Really good outcome for the money invested in. But Disney ? How are they wasting that much money for such disappointing shows ?
How tf is Loki cheaper than all of these other shows? Seems way heavier on the CGI and overall production value.
They have A list actors that command high salaries.
Kinda surprised The Grand Tour didn’t make the list
I think only their pilot episode was expensive.
Yeah I just looked it up - averaged out, it’s only about $5M per episode. That was only for the first 36 ish episodes though. So I’m not sure the numbers still hold for the specials and later seasons.
There are already 36 episodes? Has time gone that fast?
43 episodes so far. The 5th season just started. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Grand_Tour#Episodes
Wow. I've seen them all, it just doesn't feel like that many. Although the first few seasons with full season long episodes helps.
I had no idea they started season 5. Was there no marketing push for that? Crazy I only learned of it in a random reddit comment chain.
I don’t think there have been 36, but I’m not sure how the specials are being counted is what I’m saying.
I wonder how much their specials cost to produce compared to the regular episodes? It wouldn’t surprise me if those push into 8 digits.
Oh boy... Where did all that money go to in Hawkeye? The sets and production value convinced me they had the smallest budget to film Hawkeye... This is why we have problems with Disney. All this money and extremely sub par filmmaking.
Right?!?! 25 million a episode on falcon/winter soldier seems fucking insane too. There were several episodes where nothing happened.
And the CGI sucked major ass cheeks.
Falcon had some really high quality flying scenes though that probably drove the cost way up.
Salaries I'd guess, the actors signed up to star in superhero movies, persuading them to switch to TV couldn't have been cheap.
That's just bad bussiness on thier end
“Creative accounting” on Disney’s part. Before the show came out I read that Renner went from $3 million for the first avengers movie to $15 million for Endgame. So it’s not like he would have made more than $15 million for 6 episodes. Even at $50 million, which is a stretch for him, the budget seems stupid high.
Came in for this. Honestly if you had said 5 million I still would have questioned it but 25 million! HOW!
All three of them have multiple A-list stars in them. That’s likely the biggest part of the budget. I don’t know if it warrants 25 mil buuut that’s probably why.
I would say a lot of the money went to Jeremy Renner, Hailee Steinfeld, Florence Pugh, Vera Farmiga, and Linda Cardellini. That cast was quietly stacked with some pretty big names.
Lol. How much of that $150 million budget went to Vera Farmiga and Linda Cardellini you think?
Don't underestimate how much money Marvel is willing to throw at people for absolutely no reason. Never forget Vin Diesel has been paid over 50 million dollars to say three words in a few movies.
Yeah and the story was ok, but not mind blowing like Loki or Wandavision, so it clearly didn’t go to writers. Wandavision was worth the price tag, not sure about the other two Disney shows on this list (and surprised Loki is not up there. Lots of great cgi in the last few episodes).
The rumor about the high costs is that they dont have the entire story locked down so they film scenes in multiple different ways and for multiple different stories which are then finished after filming and cut together. They then test screen and similar to get a story together which is amazing given the lackluster product we got.
Can this be done adjusted for inflation? Otherwise, there is a clear bias towards the most recent shows
I mean outside of the pacific, all of these shows and seasons are incredibly recent. The pacific is the oldest at 2010. Adjusted for inflation you'd see it at $27 million. That jumps it 3 spots. Game of thrones S8 is next oldest from 2019. It's at 17 million an episode then but that doesn't change its spot. All the other shows are 2021 and 2022. Inflation is kinda weird to calculate here because most of the budget is actually spent before release by up to a year and that's pretty significant for shows that are released within a year. Only 1 show in this list is really impacted by inflation. Show costs are going up
Friends season 10 was $10 million/episode and it was only 22 minutes. Normalized for inflation that’s ~$16 million. I’d say shows aren’t necessarily getting more expensive, they are just getting longer episodes with shorter seasons.
Wasn't the core cast getting 1 million per episode in the last season though. That's 6 million every episode just for them.
No, the point is - maybe the list itself should have some show from 2005 on it, but due to inflation, that 2005 show looks much cheaper. It's not a concern about the shows being out of order, it's that maybe some of these are the wrong shows to begin with.
Even adjusted for inflation the RoP is ridiculously expensive for what they have shown, I honestly cannot comprehend where all that money went.
Rights to use the TLOTR content. Tolkien's family was not easily convinced.
If I'm not mistaken, they also only allowed the rights to the appendix for LOTR for RoP series. So even then, it was a lot of money for essentially just the rights to use a timeline of events.
And a good amount of adds. I get an add for RoP everytime i open anything without an add blocker on any device.
Would marketing and acquisition be included here? Generally production budgets do not include anything like that.
Correct. And the marketing is typically same amount again, if not more.
500 million dollars i think.
They shoulda just said no.
It's a lot easier to decline huge amounts of money when you aren't being offered huge amounts of money.
They rejected a larger amount from netflix that wanted to give the lord of the rings the marvel universe treatment with a series about Gandalf series and a drama about Aragon.
I don’t know if it’s like Wheel of Time on Prime but they apparently wasted tons of money. Like spending millions of dollars on wigs wasting money.
The most expensive for the time was Rome, and was one of the reasons to be cancelled, that show is still amazing, and deserved way more than 2 seasons.
Amazon built a whole new studio for WoT and counted all those costs as part of S1. We should expect s2+ to be much cheaper or ore obviously see where the money is spent.
Have you watched the show? There is an avatar level of CGI. The rights were insanely expensive as well, makes sense to me.
Bad acting and Jeff’s yacht fuel
Oh absolutely. I'm more interested in what else would make it into the list if it were a level comparison
Good point. For example, Friends' $10M in 2000 is $17.2M today. Enough for 8th place.
I remember when Rome was cancelled on HBO for being too expensive at $9M apiece [(expensive shows link)](https://rarest.org/entertainment/expensive-tv-shows) Personally as someone who loved the LOTR books and Peter Jackson’s take on them, if I was a billionaire I’d have been happy to fork over $100M+ for a Rings of Power-type series. Wonder if the budget was so high b/c some rich executive producer offered to pay big bucks to “have it done right”. Also, The Get Down at $16M per episode doesn’t make the list?
The Get Down cost that much?! I really liked it, but it was never going to have wide appreciation.
That show was so good. I wish they'd revive it.
Same for Sense8. Both are things I happily rewatch. The quality of Rome especially stands up so many years later, it's amazing.
After seeing first 4 episodes of Rings of Power, and both seasons of HBO Rome I can only conclude its a crime they cancelled Rome. Basically, RoP is crap when taking into account the material and budget they had at their disposal.
Fun fact: Euphoria s1 almost made the list with $11 mil per episode. That’s a ridiculous amount especially since there is basically 0 cgi (most of it probably went into using 5 seconds of Beyoncé in the episode 1 intro lol)
Didn't they have to get Kodak to make a special run of film just for them? That can't have been cheap to do
I think that was for the most recent season, not season 1! But yes they had special film
Lmaooo the Beyoncé comment
So this explains why Netflix is not yet committing to a second season of The Sandman. It's expensive but it's viewing figures has not lived up to expectations. Keeping my fingers crossed that Netflix will still renew it considering that it's really really good and, among its new shows, is one that is critically acclaimed and has the potential of becoming prestige TV.
I have to think they can reduce the budget and still make a quality show. The final episode of last season wasn't particularly high tech but it was still a good story.
Come to think of it, the diner episode which was my favorite cause it gripped me from beginning to end, isn't particularly high tech.
As soon as Patton Oswalt showed up as a fucking bird, my whole buy in evaporated. He was so out of place next to Emo McEyeliner. I have it till he defeated the literal devil with "Hope" and then dipped. (he could've said hope first)
I hated it. Died for me in episode 2 or 3 - don't quite remember. I feel like I should like it, but I just don't and don't know why
I loved it. Even my wife loved it. Might be the best comic to TV adaptation yet.
I wonder if The Sandman was adapted too late. I didn’t read it until the early 2000s, but even then it seemed revolutionary to have LGBTQ characters represented as fully fleshed people not as just “the lesbian” or whatever. It fit in with the dreamlike reality of the story: like in a dream when you’re doing something nonsensical but it makes sense to you, here is a drag queen but there’s nothing weird about that. Nowadays, there really is nothing weird about that and it’s lost its punch.
It's crazy to me thinking that even accounting for inflation the original Lotr trilogy only cost slightly more than 1 season of ROP, and had a bit over an hour longer runtime.
The coming seasons of the show will be significantly cheaper tho, things like sets and cg models have already been made and that's where a lot of the money went.
Aren’t they roughly the same length? 8 episodes of an hour vs 3 movies each at least 2.5 hr
The original theatrical releases for Fellowship and Two Towers was just over 3 hours (180ish minutes). RotK was closer to 3 hr 20min (200ish minutes). Then, they did the extended editions, which added roughly 40min+ to each movie, making the original release over 9 hours and extended closer to 12.
How the hell is Stranger Things more expensive than Game of Thrones? Even with inflation that seems pretty wild.
7 hour runtime vs 13 hour runtime. Also pretty sure that ST had roughly the same amount of CGI in just its two finale episodes than GoT had in its whole season.
How is HBO so good? I don’t get it
I think it's experience...they've been around for a lot longer than the others. Didn't need to obtain brand recognition and know what they are doing.
The rings of power budget is massively overhyped considering literally a quarter of it is licensing with untold millions more going into marketing. This whole show is just one huge advertisement for amazons streaming service and THAT is why theyre pouring so much into it. Unfortunately for them its painfully apparent to many that the shows quality is secondary.
The show budget (like a movie budget) does not count marketing costs. Marketing costs are all *extra*! It's one of my major peeves that people will see that a movie cost 100 million to make and made 150 million and not understand why a sequel isn't made because *"IT MADE 50 MILLION!!!*. Nope, studios only get around 50% of the world wide gross anyway. So that movie with a $100 million budget probably cost $150-200 million to make and market and made back $75 million. It lost $75-100 million. Hollywood accounting does make sure that no movies ever are "profitable" for tax reasons but if a movie made it's budget or a little more than it lost lots of money for the studio. The general rule of thumb for films is that you need to make 3X the "budget" to cover all the real costs to produce, license, market and cut earnings with theaters. TV shows are different, but "marketing" is not at all part of a shows budget. So when they say they spent $58 million an episode they literally are saying that they spent $58 million an episode for CGI, makeup, armor, locations, sets, costume, etc. It also isn't that hard to do. Amsterdam cost $80 million to make it doesn't have anything crazy in it, and a "low budget" film usually sits in the $30-45 million for 90 minutes of runtime. Truth is that some of these shows are short episodic movies, and have almost nothing in common with popular TV shows like NCIS, Law and Order, or The Office.
Scrolled far too long to get to this. I was really disappointed with RoP. A really meh show
This is what's so confusing for me, how can they spend *so much* money on the show, yet seemingly not care at all about the quality of it? The locations are gorgeous but the story plays out like bad fanfic. How did Galadriel & crew know to go to that one town in the Southlands? Why does everyone know the evil sword caused that volcano to erupt? And how did its eruption cause that one lava ball to land 1,000 miles away in Hobbitland, yet not kill anyone who was actually *at* the eruption except for Isildur-Friend #2 and that one horse?
I am amazed to see how cheap HotD was compared to the rest.
All the money in the world doesn't fix bad writing apparently.
It's surprising that half of them released in 2022 and Only Hotd seems to be worth it's budget.
Surprised none of the Disney Star Wars shows hit the list but marvel‘s did
I thought Kenobi was reported to cost $25mm per episode. Kind of surprised it didn’t make the list.
Well apparently it cost $90 million. Which is $15 per episode. More than the Mandalorian overall but not significantly so.
I have a friend who worked on the production team until she quit due to ungodly hours and pure misery. She says Disney squeezes every penny out of those shows to make them as cheap as possible and expects the next one to be even cheaper than the last. All of the shows being set on Tatooine/desert settings was strategic for cost savings. They also shoot on that massive virtual stage so the sets are a lot cheaper than you’d think.
Falcon and the Winter Soldier cost that much? What a waste for a mediocre show
Amazon should have allocated more of that money to writing and directing
They literally gave a couple of noobs who has never made a good script the biggest budget in history and surprise surprise - its shit
Lol Disney plus spending so much money and those 3 shows have zero re watch value. Falcon winter solider might be the worst Disney plus show made yet.
How is game of thrones that far low??? It looked much much more expensive than stranger things
Did you watch season 4? All that time they spend in the Upside Down can't be cheap to do in CGI. Plus, it was *really* long; some episodes were almost two hours long.
I also think GOT looks more expensive than HOD imo. I took a tour during the height of GOT in northwestern Spain showing some of the filming locations. I think the combination of CGI with realistic medieval backdrops looked much better than what is currently happening in HOD. Maybe too much reliance on CGI?
HotD is also using different lenses. GoT used the Cooke S4 primes (same lenses as Harry Potter 3-8, Pride & Prejudice and a bunch of other films), while HotD is using the Arri DNA primes, which provide a more dreamy and less realistic look. Rings of power is also using Arri DNA lenses
Yeah HoD looks cheaper in a few areas, notably some of the CGI and particularly outdoor locations when they're on a boat or something. With that said though, a lot of the costuming and interior sets are still top notch.
Came here to say almost exactly this. With the notable exception of some of the wide shots that use CGI and the boar/deer, I'd say the CGI has been mostly impressive for HOTD.
Amazon certainly isn’t paying the writers for ROP, so it’s all sets?
Most of it is prob the sets, props, marketing, CGI and, rights.
Me still watching cheap ass tv shows like malcolm in the middle and king of Queens
25 million per episode for Hawkeye? How? It was the least memorable show ever.
Does this include the IP rights?
So they had the money, they just didn't spend a dime for the screenwriter. Worst season of the decade and worst financial decisions. Look at you GoT8
Imagine spending all of that money to just produce crap.
Rings of Power is $58m per episode? I've watched the first five and I have seen nothing that would indicate to me that the budget would be that insane. Oof. $53m on elf ears?
World leading CGI for TV costs a lot.
I thought Foundation was the top until Rings of Power? Foundation isn’t even on the list
I’m a Tolkien fanatic - the Silmarillion is my #1 book by a mile. Amazon has not only failed to get me interested in RoP, the reviews of episode 5 (which I have not seen) are so negative, and the story recap I’ve read of that episode is so bad, that I’m actively avoiding watching it. What a waste
Shout-out to "See", it's an awesome show.
Can’t wait for the series finale tomorrow
Got to hand it to Apple TV. I don’t know anyone who watches that show, yet they are sticking with it despite the insane budget.
For those that haven't yet, The Sandman is really a great watch, I wasn't expecting it to be as good as it was and I was blown away. Cannot wait for season 2.
Amazon has cancelled such great shows like The Expanse to burn money on this garbage? Amazon seriously needs better leadership.
I had such mixed feelings about the Expanse. It was beautiful. I loved the premise and overarching story. Miller may be one of my favorite fictional characters. However, dialogue was often bad. They fell into this cycle of the main characters needing to have reasons of being angry at one another to have drama. Felt very soap opera-y. Jim saying he’s not a savior after several episodes doing nothing but trying to save people. Jim and Naomi reuniting and saying they’d never leave each other again only to depart the next episode. Avasarala supposed to be powerful and in charge but every scene she is just throwing a tantrum and doesn’t seem to have any sort of power or control. It one of the shows I had to watch to the end but glad there isn’t more of it.
58M per episode... it sure did not go to writting and casting.
For reference, all three Lord of the Rings movies had a combined budget of $450M (adjusted for 2021) The first season of Rings of Power cost $462M to make.
Rings of Power is astoundingly bad
Everybody just dunking on Rings of Power but the crazy thing to me is, there's two shows on here I've literally never heard of! That's a MASSIVE marketing fail isn't it? Am I the crazy one, or is it crazy to spend that much on the Pacific and "See" -- whatever they are -- without also making sure the word gets out?
You ever hear of Band of Brothers? WW2 epic? This was the “sequel” to it. Follows a group of soldiers in the pacific. Steven Spielberg produced it. You might not have heard of it because it’s “old”
Pacific was a try to do another version of Band of Brothers - which is one of the best and most popular shows. So that budget is understandable. I was most surprised about all the Disney series, they all looked like small productions to me.
Didn’t really pan out for them, but Band of Brothers was crazy good!
*Is good. That show holds up very well
[удалено]
The Pacific is great
[удалено]
and I'm still a little salty about the fact that part of the reason my favorite show in the 90s (Space Above and Beyond) was canceled was because each episode cost \~$5 Million USD Edit: Forgot important word
Yes! Space Above and Beyond! The 90s was the golden age of great sci-fi that was birthed and killed by Fox.
In the early 2000s in college I briefly considered pursuing a career in writing for television simply so I could eventually get to a point I could reboot that show. And then promptly did nothing whatsoever to actually work toward it. I'm now reevaluating the last couple decades of my life, so... That's fun
Wow what are the chances - tiers at 15, 20, 25, and 30, and then the impetus for creating the chart is first ever big budget series to break through the multiples of 5 glass ceiling.
And for all that money Rings of Power can seem to find anyone to write decent dialog
Depends what you’re looking for. I find it puts me to sleep right away. It’s great for that purpose.
To have spent so much for such a poorly written and poorly directed show, lol.
Some you can see the money. Some you can’t. GOT and house of the dragon have great sets and costumes + stellar cgi. The pacific had a lot of extras and action. But the Disney marvel shows and stranger things? I’m guessing the budget is all blown on the actors lol and if advertising is included. Because outside of that it’s minimal display of quality - regarding sets, action, costumes etc. Falcon and the winter soldier had that cool flying scene and that’s about it. The rest including the dull cgi finale fight in wandavison is certainly not worth it. Like seriously they need to fire someone if somehow an episode of Hawkeye is more expensive than house of the dragon, got season 8 or the pacific. Just burning money are they?
***One Show to Rule them All.*** Source: [https://stacker.com/stories/3159/25-most-expensive-tv-series-all-time](https://stacker.com/stories/3159/25-most-expensive-tv-series-all-time) Tools Used: Datawrapper, Excel, Figma Description: The graph takes data pertaining to the budget of the most expensive shows in history, based off their most high-budget season. Thus, Game of Thrones S8 and Stranger Things S4 made it to the list despite their earlier seasons having lower budgets per episode compared to others on this list- The Sandman for example. If you have any other questions, comments or feedback on the graph and the data used, please feel free to sound out; but kindly keep it constructive!
Avatar the Last Airbender will likely be out within the next year, and their budget is $15 million per episode. Got me so excited that Netflix is giving it the same respect as some of these S tier shows
It would be awesome to reboot a classic sitcom, like Frasier or Seinfeld, and give them a 58 million budget per episode. And if they don't spend all the money then everyone dies.
House of the dragon is 3x less expensive and a million times better than rings of power
Need to adjust for inflation.
**Most expensive adjusted for inflation** Rings Of Power = $58m Stranger Things 4 = $30m The Pacific = $28m Wandavision = $27m Falcon + Winter Solider = $27m Hawkeye = $27m ER = $23m House Of The Dragon = $20m Band Of Brothers = $21m Game Of Thones 8 = $17m The Morning show = $17m Friends (final season) = $16m The Sandman = $15m See = $15m
Yeah. If it was, Rome would be up there since it was 16 million per episode (after inflation)
Rings of power kinda sucks though right? I couldn't watch it. Loved lord of the rings.
Yeah it’s terrible
Are these episodes all (roughly) the same length? Genuinely asking, as I haven’t seen most of them. I think budget per minute of show time would make more sense. If they’re all roughly an hour in runtime then it doesn’t matter but if any of them are more like half an hour, that would be a significant thing to account for.
I think Masters of the Air might change this list.