Netflix spent over $300 million on first two seasons of The Witcher, Blood Origin

The Witcher is easily one of Netflix’s biggest series. At the time, the first season debut was the most-watched premiere of all-time on the platform, and since then it has continued to be a central part of Netflix’s portfolio. The show’s third season premieres later this month, and since it’s also the final season where lead actor Henry Cavill will play the monster-hunting witcher Geralt of Rivia, there’s a lot of pressure on it to do well. After all, making these sorts of big-budget fantasy shows isn’t cheap.

To see what I mean, Forbes has just published a fascinating report on how much money it’s taken to bring The Witcher to the small screen. Studios usually keep these numbers under wraps, but The Witcher has to publicly disclose its budget in order to qualify for tax credits in the UK, so we have moire insight than usual.

Through the publicly available data and Forbes‘ own sleuthing, they’ve deduced that overall Netflix has spent upward of $318 million total to create the first two seasons of The Witcher and last year’s live-action spinoff The Witcher: Blood Origin. Netflix is tossing plenty of coins at this franchise.

The Witcher has cost Netflix more than $300 million, and there’s still plenty ahead

Netflix set up subsidiary companies to produce each season, so Forbes was able to break down the budget with a good degree of specificity. Season 1 was produced by a Netflix subsidiary formed in 2018 called Hocus Pocus Productions and reportedly cost $92.1 million total to produce, or around $11.5 million per episode. Netflix was able to get a reimbursement of $7.1 million through those tax breaks we mentioned.

Season 2 was produced by a different Netflix subsidiary, Thetford Productions, and cost almost double the first. The studio spent $176.3 million on season 2, or about $22 million per episode. Around $16.6 million of that budget went to salaries, and there were quite a lot of them to pay in season 2 since the show’s staff (including actors) rose to 143 members. The tax reimbursement was more than three times higher than on season 1; Netflix got back $36.5 million.

So all told, Netflix has spent $268.4 million total on the first two seasons of The Witcher. But that’s still shy of that $318 million we started with. That’s where Blood Origin comes in.

The Witcher: Blood Origin cost Netflix more than $50 million before post-production

Like the first two seasons of the mothership series, The Witcher: Blood Origin was produced by a British company, this one named Ripper Productions. Forbes only has data up through September 30, 2021, two months before the show wrapped shooting, so we don’t have a full picture of what Netflix spent on Blood Origin, but what’s there is interesting enough on its own.

According to the report, Netflix spent $50.3 million on The Witcher: Blood Origin; and remember, that number doesn’t include post-production. Blood Origin is around two-and-a-half hours long across its four episodes, which means that it will have cost upwards of $20 million per hour to create. That’s quite a lot for a series that was widely panned upon its release, even if Netflix did manage to get around $10 million in tax reimbursements for it.

The Witcher franchise isn’t slowing down any time soon. Netflix is currently filming another spinoff about the teenage band of thieves known as The Rats, and The Witcher season 3 is set to be one of Netflix’s biggest releases of the year. Who knows how much those cost? Maybe we’ll find out in a few years.

The Witcher season 3 volume 1 premieres on June 29, with volume 2 following a month later on July 27.

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