How production costs may be ruining our favorite fantasy epics on television

In 2001, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring hit movie theaters with an incredible impact. Along with the Harry Potter series, it gave fantasy fans proof that the great stories that make up that genre could be made into quality movies.

The biggest problem was that Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy may have set the bar too high. When these kinds of properties started to get adapted as TV shows, they tried to equal the splendor of their big-screen counterparts, which means high production costs. Now those costs may be out of control.

Jackson did a brilliant thing when he decided to film all three Lord of the Rings movies at once. All of the production costs, sets, salaries, etc., were part of one project rather than three. Now, one season of Amazon's The Lord of the Rings TV show, The Rings of Power, struggles to fit into eight episodes, with a two-year gap between seasons.

The future of shows like House of the Dragon, The Wheel of Time, and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power could be in danger

When the season 2 finale of HBO's Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon aired, there was a sense of disappointment among fans. The season ended with a whimper instead of the anticipated bang. Paul Tassi of Forbes reported that the anti-climatic finale was due to budgetary concerns; there were more episodes planned, but the budget wouldn't allow for them to get made this year.

According to Tassi, each episode costs approximately $20 million to produce. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is even more expensive. According to Michael Nordine of Variety, season one cost $462 million, not counting the $250 million paid to the Tolkien estate for the rights. That comes out to an absurd $58 million an episode.

According to Tom Power of Tech Radar, Amazon's other "big" budget series is The Wheel of Time. Despite The Wheel of Time arguably being better than The Rings of Power, Amazon under-promotes it even though it is more cost-effective.

While the production of some of these shows is spectacular, is it all that necessary? Max produces a House of the Dragon aftershow called The House That Dragons Built which goes behind the scenes of each episode. A way to cut costs would be not to have three seamstresses spend seven weeks making one dress. Or who knows how many weeks, people, and money to make elaborate castles. For the most part, none of these things are necessary.

The story itself is one of the main things lost in the cost of making these shows. Take The Wheel of Time. The showrunners do their best to condense massive volumes of source material into approximately eight hours of screen time every season. The story comes out rushed, and the character development isn't where it should be. With even two more episodes (though 12 per season would be ideal), the show could go at a better pace and tell more of the story.

Game of Thrones, based on the voluminous Song of Ice and Fire series, was at its best when it could adhere closely to the source material. There were 10 episodes per season for the first six seasons, and with terrific writing, they were able to tell the story at the appropriate pace. As the series went along, costumes, settings, sets and locations all became more elaborate and expensive. And of course, the number of episodes per season went down. All of that climaxed in a famously divisive series finale that left many fans unhappy.

Audiences have to shoulder the blame as well. I admit to being unhappy with the season two finale of House of the Dragon. As fans, we've come to expect big, bloody battles. With this particular series, we want dragon battles. Well, these big battles are expensive and they may have become cost-prohibitive.

As fans, we are losing out on great stories in favor of flashy special effects and monumental battles. We're trading plot and character development for hand-stitched dresses and hand-crafted armor. We complain about items left out or changed from the source material, but also complain if this battle or that doesn't live up to expectations.

The storytelling is getting lost among all the bells and whistles, and this could be the downfall of this era of tentpole sci-fi and fantasy on television. If a balance can't be found between telling the stories as they should be told and providing visually appealing effects, no one will be able to afford to make any more of these shows.

Cutting down elaborate productions might also help to cut down time between seasons. Netflix's excellent series Shadow and Bone was axed after only two seasons. Production costs had to be a factor, but the show lost half its audience during the two-year wait between seasons 1 and 2. I know I had no idea when the second season aired. Even though I enjoyed season 1, it went out of sight and out of mind, and I found out about the show's cancelation after season 2 aired.

How to fix the problem

Several things need to happen to save sci-fi and fantasy shows on TV. First, production teams have to do a better job prioritizing what to spend money on. They must decide what items might be unnecessary to the story and eliminate them.

Secondly, with the saved expenses, expand the number of episodes per season when necessary. This is something The Wheel of Time definitely needs.

Thirdly, the fans need to be more lenient and understanding when the source material is changed or eliminated to better move the overall story along.

Hopefully, advances in CGI and AI can help eliminate some of the production costs. Hopefully, studios and showrunners can get on the same page about how best to allocate resources and still tell stories in the best way possible. And hopefully, fans can enjoy seeing their favorite literary fantasy epics brought to life onscreen for a long time to come.

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