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Golden age... (from left) The Morning Show; Game of Thrones; The Crown; The Mandalorian; Succession
Golden age... (from left) The Morning Show; Game of Thrones; The Crown; The Mandalorian; Succession. Composite: Apple TV+; HBO; Netflix; Allstar/Disney
Golden age... (from left) The Morning Show; Game of Thrones; The Crown; The Mandalorian; Succession. Composite: Apple TV+; HBO; Netflix; Allstar/Disney

From The Crown to Game of Thrones: what’s the most expensive TV show ever?

This article is more than 4 years old

As the streaming giants vie for viewers, the cost of shows spirals ever upwards. We explore the industry’s biggest spenders

The “most expensive TV show ever” is back – but as Netflix grandly unfurls season three of its uber-opulent monarchy saga The Crown, the landscape is different to the one in existence even two years ago, when the show launched. Then, it was proof that Netflix was destroying long-held notions of what TV could cost. Now, the fictionalised Liz II is just one soldier in a billion-dollar streaming war: shows as expensive as The Crown are ten a penny.

Last week saw the US unveiling of Disney+, which will offer three new Marvel series and, in The Mandalorian, a luxurious TV addition to the Star Wars universe. Such shows embody a principle that runs right through this revolution in production budgets: they have been commissioned for streaming platforms where TV originals have to integrate seamlessly into a back catalogue of blockbuster movies.

Netflix’s other big new rival is Apple TV+, which debuted worldwide earlier this month. Its two big openers, The Morning Show and See, are both thought to cost around the same as the final season of Game of Thrones. Yet both will be put in the shade if, as is rumoured, Apple’s upcoming Band of Brothers sequel Masters of the Air breaks the $20m per episode barrier; if it doesn’t, Amazon’s megabucks Lord of the Rings prequel almost certainly will. For comparison, the BBC’s drama commissioning guide lists £1m ($1.3m) as its top price for an hour of “premium” drama.

The inflation is intensified by the fact that, for many of the companies entering the streaming race, getting punters to become captive members of the brand family is more important than directly making a profit from TV. In the famous words of Amazon head Jeff Bezos: “When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes.” Apple is giving away a year of TV+ to people who buy a new iPhone or other Apple device. There is much more at stake here than winning ratings battles or scooping up Emmys.

Netflix, meanwhile, is still in its “world domination now, balanced books later” phase. It is set to splash $15bn on content in 2019, a figure boosted by the streamer’s new focus on big deals for big talents. Ryan Murphy and Shonda Rhimes have both been paid megabucks in the hope that they can come up with a global smash to match HBO’s Game of Thrones. As for HBO itself, the $85bn acquisition of its parent company Time Warner by AT&T last year means the cable network has money to burn on its own Netflix-killer, streaming site HBO Max, and it is still pumping out visibly expensive series such as Westworld and Succession on US cable.

Is this sustainable? If there is a crash coming, it is some way off. Here are six shows that have changed TV’s financial game ...

Game of Thrones

The cost of war... Game of Thrones. Photograph: HBO

The flagship for the whole bigger-than-film, global-phenomenon era of telly, Thrones started out costing a reported $5m per episode, although showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss still complained that some of their planned apocalyptic battles had been replaced with dialogue scenes due to a lack of cash. The turning point came with the season two spectacular Blackwater, for which HBO are said to have shelled out a then-extraordinary $8m. Critical and audience acclaim helped to increase worldwide revenues and create demand for further giant rumbles, so that by the time the eighth and final season aired, with its constant war and explicit dragon-on-dragon violence, episodes were costing more like $15m. While late-period Thrones did not skimp on its effects, the main reasons for its swollen budget were old-school: it sent hordes of performers and a huge crew to far-flung locations (Malta, Iceland, Croatia) and kept them there for months. Plus, while it tended to save money by killing as many leads as possible, by the end it still had five actors whose pay rises had left them making $500,000 per episode each.
Talent 5/5 Effects 4/5 Locations 4/5 Estimated total $630m

The Crown

Ooh ER... Olivia Colman as Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown. Photograph: Netflix/PA

Netflix’s commitment to invest an estimated $130m in two seasons of The Crown was, when it launched in 2017, a huge statement of intent, even if it wasn’t quite the most expensive show on TV on a per-episode basis. (Each new Game of Thrones was costing around $10m, compared to the Netflix royal epic’s $6.5m, although Netflix was making more episodes per season.) The Crown was and is a big tank on British TV’s lawn: Claire Foy and Matt Smith led a vast repertory of classy thesps. The upcoming third and fourth seasons, with Helena Bonham Carter, Gillian Anderson and Olivia Colman joining the cast, won’t be any cheaper in casting terms, but the real money is in what surrounds the actors. Take the nine-minute scene in which Elizabeth and Philip wed. It took five days to shoot at Ely Cathedral, with Foy wearing a replica dress that reportedly cost $37,000, one of many painstakingly accurate costumes. No amount of cash could buy access to Buckingham Palace, so the production team blended studio sets with Lancaster House, Greenwich Naval College, Goldsmith’s Hall and, for the exteriors, CGI. The Crown has to look a class above, and it pays for the privilege.
Talent 4/5 Effects 2/5 Locations 5/5 Estimated total $260m

The Mandalorian

King’s bounty... Pedro Pascal as The Mandalorian. Photograph: François Duhamel/Allstar/Disney/Lucasfilm

This Star Wars spin-off – taking place in a time between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens – has cost a vast amount if you count the version that was knocking around in 2012 before Disney bought Lucasfilm: it had 50 scripts written and a planned budget of $5-$6m per episode, which back then meant it was too expensive to make. In 2018, it was announced that The Lion King director Jon Favreau was showrunning a souped-up replacement for Disney+, with the streaming service supposedly investing in at least two seasons at $10m an episode. The cast, led by Pedro Pascal (Narcos/Game of Thrones), isn’t too starry, although how much Werner Herzog charged Disney to appear as “The Client” is hard to gauge. But Favreau has a track record of delivering hits, so he would command a massive fee, and he is known for cutting-edge effects, which here include wholesale digital creations that can be described as “like The Phantom Menace, but not rubbish because that was 20 years ago”. The show may end up costing nearer to $15m per episode and is Disney’s biggest calling card as it enters the online arena. They should have called it Streaming Wars: A New Hope.
Talent 3/5 Effects 5/5 Locations 2/5 Estimated total $240m

Succession

Mo money mo problems... Succession. Photograph: HBO

Fittingly for a show about a super-rich elite who hate revealing personal details to the press, HBO’s critically lionised saga has managed to keep its exact budget secret. It is, however, upfront about its attention to detail, employing elite consultants to make sure the niceties of everything from helicopters and boats to weddings and political campaigns are just as real billionaires would want them. Looking expensive means paying for expensive props, costumes and, most of all, locations, all of them shot on film to give them the right air of opulence. Logan’s apartment is a sound stage but a lot of the settings are unfakeably plush: the English castle for the season one wedding and the plethora of posh venues in Manhattan are all premium rentals. The Hungarian boar hunt was actually shot on Long Island, but Long Island stately homes are not shabby. Top of the list is the Hamptons retreat in the opening episode of season two, closely followed by a New York State mansion later on in the run: both would cost more than $125m to buy, and lesser properties locally are $125,000 for a week’s hire, off-season.
Talent 2/5 Effects 0/5 Locations 5/5 Estimated total $90m

The Morning Show

Breakfast of champions... Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell in The Morning Show. Photograph: Hilary B Gayle/AP

No mystery about where the money has gone here: Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, the stars of Apple TV+’s most high-profile show, are reportedly being paid $1.25m per episode, each. That is more than Aniston got for Friends in its pomp and presumably a lot more than co-star Steve Carell is getting, since nobody has mentioned his salary (although he can’t have been cheap, either). Thus a programme with no special effects and middling set and location expenses – it’s about the tribulations of a hit breakfast-news TV show – has ended up costing Apple somewhere between $12m and $15m per episode. It has already had a knock-on effect, too: when Nicole Kidman came to renegotiate her pay packet for season two of HBO’s Big Little Lies, the news about her Lies colleague Witherspoon’s cushy new gig helped Kidman bump herself up from $350,000 per episode to a reported $1m. This contributed to Big Little Lies itself also becoming as expensive as the last season of Game of Thrones. The Morning Show might not have been universally well reviewed, but it has caused another recalibration of how much money you need to play the modern TV game.
Talent 5/5 Effects 0/5 Locations 1/5 Estimated total $250m

The Lord of the Rings

Shire power... The Lord of the Rings. Photograph: New Line/Saul Zaentz/Wingnut/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock

Amazon are said to have paid the estate of JRR Tolkien $250m just for the rights to make its upcoming Rings series, starring Joseph Mawle, so it would be pretty expensive even if it were just one long overhead shot of someone slowly turning over the pages of the book. It is safe to say it will be rather more lavish than that. Having not quite nailed it with major expenditures such as Jack Ryan (an estimated $8m an episode) or The Tick ($5m an episode, somehow), Amazon is pressing the nuclear button this time around with a mooted $1bn production budget. Scale is the thing here, with sets due to be built from scratch, filming to take place in New Zealand and a $3bn-grossing film trilogy to be measured against. Although Amazon’s Rings is a prequel rather than another straight dramatisation of the novel, anything less globally impactful than the Oscar-winning movies will be deemed a failure. All this is a result of a clear diktat issued by Jeff Bezos in 2017: get me the new Game of Thrones. In the new streaming war, that is the treasure everyone’s seeking.
Talent 2/5; Effects 5/5; Locations 5/5; Estimated total $1bn

The Crown season three is available on Netflix from Sunday 17 November

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