Game of Thrones was the most expensive show on the planet…for a minute. When the series debuted on HBO in 2011, it cost around $6 million per episode to produce, according to Variety. That was considered costly for the time; for comparison’s sake, a big show like Lost — which ended a year before Game of Thrones began — cost $4 million per episode. None of these series were made with couch change. This is serious money.
It’s also laughable compared to what gets spent on TV these days. We’re currently living in an age where studios and streamers are willing to expend sums of money on TV shows once thought unthinkable for all but the biggest tentpole movies.
What shows are the most expensive, and how did we get here? That’s what we’re going to examine here today. Let’s count up from some of the lightest hitters to the heaviest, starting with a trio of shows that cost as much out of the gate as Game of Thrones did when it ended.
The $15 million club: The Mandalorian, The Sandman and Avatar: The Last Airbender
By the end of its run, Game of Thrones was costing $15 million per episode. This was when Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons were full grown, the show was shooting all over the world, and the principle cast members had all negotiated handsome pay raises. At the time, there were no shows that cost more.
Nowadays, shows are starting out at this level. According to The Wall Street Journal, The Mandalorian cost $15 million per episode at the outset, and it’s almost certainly gotten more expensive since then. As the first-ever live-action Star Wars show, expectations for The Mandalorian were high. It also pioneered new technology, and obviously depicting the galaxy far, far away is going to take a lot of expensive special effects work. So the price tag isn’t a huge shock — heaven knows Disney has the money — but starting where Game of Thrones ended is still a power move.
And there are other shows coming down the pipeline that are starting at the $15 million mark that don’t have the pedigree of Star Wars. Per Screenrant, Netflix is spending $15 million per episode on its upcoming live-action remake of Avatar: The Last Airbender. They’ll also be spending that on their adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s comic book The Sandman.
The Sandman is an especially big swing, because it’s a complicated text that may put some people off with its stylized approach to storytelling. And yet Netflix is spending Game of Thrones money on it anyway, before they know whether it’ll be a hit. It’s as if Game of Thrones has raised the bar; if you’re not spending at least as much as they were, you’re not in the game.
House of the Dragon costs “under $20 million”
So Game of Thrones was, at one time, the most costly show in the world. Will House of the Dragon, HBO’s upcoming prequel show, inherit that crown?
As it ends up, no — in fact, it won’t come close — but it does cost more than its predecessor ever did. According to Variety, the Game of Thrones prequel show will cost “under $20 million” per episode. As expensive as that is, it makes sense; one of the biggest expenditures on Game of Thrones were Dany’s dragons, and they had relatively little to do until the final couple of seasons. But as the title suggests, House of the Dragon will heavily feature dragons, and will need a budget big enough for their prodigious appetites.
The full title of that Variety article is, “How HBO Kept ‘House of the Dragon’ Costs Under $20 Million per Episode.” That title is very strange to me, because it’s phrased in a way to suggest that HBO is making House of the Dragon for a steal, as if $20 million per episode isn’t a f**kton of money that would have made executives’ heads explode had it been suggested just a few short years ago.
The article explains that HBO has managed to keep costs this…ahem…low because at this point the network is adept at making these elaborate world-building dramas, not just thanks to Game of Thrones but also His Dark Materials and Westworld. That may be true, but the framing of the article suggests how far the goalposts have shifted. If $20 million per episode is considered cheap, what must some of HBO’s competitors be spending?
Marvel shows can cost as much as $25 million per episode
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the most successful movie empire in the history of cinema, and Disney is trying to replicate that success on TV. From WandaVision to Loki to Moon Knight and well beyond, Disney has big plans for Marvel superheroes on the small screen, and it’s paying handsomely to make them happen.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, shows like WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and Hawkeye cost “as much as $25 million per episode.” And that article came out before the first Marvel show actually premiered on Disney+, so we can assume that prices have only risen since then.
At first blush, that figure might seem extreme. Take a show like The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Sure, it has high production values, but it’s set on Earth in the present day, meaning the producers don’t have to build a fantasy world from scratch like they have to do with The Mandalorian or House of the Dragon. Also, episodes of Marvel shows tend to be a bit shorter on average than the other series on our list. How could episodes like that possibly cost $25 million apiece?
This is a good time to bring up actor salaries. Marvel shows have something a lot of these other shows don’t: bankable stars. Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, Jeremy Renner…all of these actors had proved their worth as Marvel heroes on the big screen, and by this point had negotiated generous compensation packages. That no doubt transferred over to TV.
Look at the example of the ’90s sitcom Friends. As a multi-camera sitcom, Friends was a very simple show to shoot — most of the action took place on a few sets and there was little in the way of special effects — yet by the end of the show’s run it cost $10 million per episode. Why? Because NBC had to pay the six principle actors exorbitant sums to keep them around.
So it is with Marvel. And even if you don’t have to pay actors a ton in the beginning, their prices will go up if the show succeeds. Speaking of…
Stranger Things season 4 costs $30 million per episode
This newest round of discourse about TV budgets got started because The Wall Street Journal reported that the upcoming fourth season of Stranger Things — which drops on Netflix on May 27 — will cost a staggering $30 million per episode, twice what Game of Thrones cost at the height of its popularity. At nine episodes, that means Netflix is spending around $270 million on this season, a sum usually reserved for only the most expensive of action blockbusters.
Once again, we have to ask the question of how a show set in our world could cost this much. True, Stranger Things is set in the ’80s, but even if the costume department has to stuff shoulder pads into blazers or acid-wash some denim, it’s not as labor-intensive as, say, making a closet full of medieval dresses fit for the ladies of the Targaryen court. And while there are plenty of special effects on Stranger Things, a lot of the in-between scenes can be filmed on ordinary sets made to look like normal American living rooms, arcades and parks.
So why is the budget blowing up? I suspect it’s a combination of the show becoming increasingly ambitious in scale — creators Matt and Ross Duffer have promised a season that tops everything that comes before — and it reaching a level of popularity where the stars can negotiate more lucrative contracts. And keep in mind that some of the cast members were already big names when they came in, most notably Winona Ryder (Joyce Byers), meaning they started with a lot of leverage.
Stranger Things is near the top of the heap when it comes to expensive TV shows. But it’s not at the very top…
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power costs an ungodly amount of money
On September 2, Amazon will premiere The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, a TV show set during the Second Age of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings story most of us are familiar with.
The series is making waves for a lot of reasons, but the biggest is the cost. According to Variety, Amazon is spending a staggering $465 million to produce the first season of this show. (The entirety of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy cost $281 million, for reference.) That works out to be around $58.125 million per episode; the first season will have eight.
Granted, some of that money will go towards building infrastructure the show hopes to use in later seasons. But still. But STILL. $465 million on one season of TV. That is bonkers. That is nuts. That is several orders of magnitude beyond anything else on this list.
It’s the kind of budget only possible when Jeff Bezos is calling the shots, with his bottomless pits of Amazon money. I would say this is the new bar for studios to clear, but I don’t know if other studios would be able to clear it even if they wanted to. I don’t know if their accountants would let them.
It’s so much money The Rings of Power almost seems more like a comic folly than a TV show. And keep in mind, this series doesn’t really have any big stars in it, so the money is all going into the show itself. Will it pay off? What would it even look like if it did?
Part of me wonders if this budget explosion is sustainable. Stranger Things is a very popular show, but is Netflix getting the return on investment necessary to justify spending $30 million per episode? Amazon is wealthy enough to do whatever it wants, but unless The Rings of Power becomes the most popular show in history, at some point you figure investors will wonder why the company is spending such exorbitant sums, Jeff’s nerdy interests be damned.
I predict that this bubble will burst sooner or later — it depends on how hard these shows end up hitting — but until it does, we’re happy to soak in all the ambitious genre TV on offer, the good and bad.
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