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Sep 26, 2022 · The show's initial episode budget was factored into the projected $1 billion Disney spent on original programming in 2020. 13. ... one of the best TV shows ... breaking cost for a TV ...
- Game of Thrones
Discover all the beloved characters and shocking deaths in...
- Friends
Discover interesting insights and trivia about the beloved...
- Game of Thrones
- Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Per Episode: $58 million. Source: Wall Street Journal. That’s a lot of cash splashed on a brand new TV show! We can’t say it’s a risky move, though, considering the millions of Lord of the Rings fans who most definitely tuned in on premiere night (25 million viewers on opening day, BTW!)
- Citadel. Per Episode: $50 Million. Forget Disney, Netflix or Hulu – Amazon Studios is the richest on the list! Their shows have been crowned the top two most expensive TV series in the world.
- 1923. Per Episode: $30-35 Million. Filmed in at least three different African countries (South Africa, Kenya, and Tanzania); starring A-listers Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren; featuring thousands of real animals; hurdling COVID-19 restrictions whilst filming – this is certainly a production that doesn’t come cheap.
- Stranger Things. Per Episode: $30 Million. Source: Wall Street Journal. Since its release in 2016, we’ve not had to introduce this hit Netflix show – it’s that huge.
- The Witcher (2019) - $10 Million Per Episode. Video game-based movies have somewhat of a reputation for being substandard, but 2019's The Witcher defied all stereotypes and established itself as not only a much-loved video game adaptation but a remarkable fantasy-drama show in itself which was embraced by fans worldwide.
- Marco Polo (2014) - $10 Million Per Episode. On the surface, Netflix's Marco Polo seemed like a big-budget project whose ambitions were on par with that of Game of Thrones, but at the end of the day, its budget and ambitions seemed to be the only thing comparable to the HBO blockbuster.
- Sense8 (2015) - $9 Million Per Episode. Created by The Matrix directors The Wachowskis, the 2015 sci-fi drama series revolved around 8 strangers from all around the world who discover that they've turned into "sensates," people who are linked mentally and must find a way to survive from being hunted down by a powerful organization and other "sensates."
- The Defenders (2017) - $8 Million Per Episode. Netflix has produced many Marvel TV shows in the past such as Daredevil and Jessica Jones, many of which have been critical hits, and they all usually came with a fixed budget of around $40 million. $
- Fringe
- Lost
- Hemlock Grove
- Deadwood
- Once Upon A Time
- House of Cards
- American Crime Story
- The Tick
- Boardwalk Empire
- Frasier
Fringe was an ambitious serialized mystery show that never became a ratings smash on FOX, but still had enough of a loyal audience that it was able to finish its story over the course of a five-year run. Fringe very much feels like The X-Files for a new generation, but the show would in many ways surpass its predecessor in terms of how it expertly ...
Television shows like the previous entry wouldn’t have been possible without the runaway success of ABC’s Lost. There were certainly many other serialized, mysterious programs before Lost came along, but this show and its addictive structure turned into a phenomenon. Whether you think Lost stuck the landing with its ending or not, there's no denyin...
Horror used to be a fairly niche genre for television to tackle, but it’s recently turned into an insanely popular trend for the medium and every network wants to be a part of this craze. Netflix’s big foray into horror was Hemlock Grove, a messy mélange of the supernatural with a pilot directed by Eli Roth. A ten-episode season cost $40 million to...
Deadwood is known for being one of HBO’s big prestige dramas from the old regime. The show was set all the way back in 1876 and it’s understandably a whole lot more expensive to accurately recreate that atmosphere than say a modern New York City apartment or office building. All of the copious set decoration, costuming, and even production details ...
Any period piece is certainly going to turn into an expensive operation for the attention to detail alone, but the same thing is also true for series that skew in the entirely different direction and embrace high fantasy. For instance, ABC’s Once Upon A Time is a mash-up of many fairy tale and Disney classics that’s largely set in a fantastical kin...
When it comes to expensive television shows, sometimes the money is all on the screen in terms of production design or effects, but there are also occasions where the expenses are much more about the people that are involved in the show. House of Cards is a political thriller that looks at a twisted view of the presidency and there’s nothing about ...
Ryan Murphy knows how to put on a good show, but a lot of the time that means that his sensationalist series cost more than the other dramas on the network. Murphy definitely has a “kitchen sink” mentality to his series where he throws in as much as possible. This sensibility paired with the large, impressive casts that star in his shows means that...
Ben Edlund’s The Tick has seen a surprisingly eventful life on television in spite of how it started off as a niche comic property. The Tick is a smart, irreverent satire of the superhero genre that was poking fun at comic book heroes long ahead of the curve. Amazon’s live-action take on the series is the third iteration of the show to be on TV, bu...
Crime shows are typically expensive endeavors. It costs a lot to have the proper amount of expendable bodies and artillery to make these turf wars feel authentic. Boardwalk Empire is like if you took a show as explosive as The Sopranos and then set it through the 1920s and ‘30s. Steve Buscemi leads this vehicle that looks at the criminal underworld...
Most of the series that have been featured on this list are dramas because they largely tend to be the type of shows that lend themselves to more expensive stories. Obviously that doesn’t mean that sitcoms can’t be expensive, but NBC’s Frasier is a particularly interesting case. The show had built up its reputations for over eleven seasons and this...
- Daniel Kurland
Oct 17, 2013 · Things could get even more expensive. Breaking Baduberfan Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder of Dreamworks, reportedly offered to pay $25 million per episodeto produce three more episodes. That’s a total of $75 million, at an average of $568,000 per minuteof final air length. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Most expensive television series (cost per episode) Title Year(s) Cost (est.) (in millions) Ref. and notes The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: 2022–present
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Sep 8, 2017 · TV Shows That Cost a Ton of Money to Make Per Episode. by Tom Foster Published Sep 8, 2017. How expensive a show is usually has to do with several factors. They have to worry about the venue, the ...
