2023 Author: Jessica James | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 03:31
Kevin Spacey, working on the 5th season of House of Cards, received a fee of $ 1 million, and the salaries of the Game of Thrones actors have tripled during the project's existence! What is the budget of the most popular TV shows of all time - in the material BeautyHack.
Lost
The story of the crew stranded on a desert island cost ABC Studios and Bad Robot Productions $ 4 million per episode. The pilot episode, which was released on September 22, 2004, cost even more - from 10 to 14 million dollars. But the costs paid off, 19 million people watched it.
Astronomical production budgets were tied to the costs of purchasing, shipping and handling the decommissioned liner. Plus, the whole team had to be transported to Hawaii - the shooting took place on the island of Oahu.
Friends
The numbers speak for themselves: during the filming of the 10th, final season in 2004, all the leading actors received $ 1 million for 25 minutes of screen time. As a result, one episode cost the producers $ 10 million. For comparison: six friends started with a fee of $ 20 thousand.
Ambulance
Another series from the past, which was released for 15 years: from 1994 to 2009. It was commissioned by NBC from Warner Bros and paid $ 9 million to $ 13 million per episode. All the while, the series has aired in prime time, earned five Emmy awards and brought worldwide popularity to Julianne Margulies and George Clooney, who played the young pediatrician Doug Ross in the Emergency Room (and made our pick of the most handsome TV characters of all time).
It is interesting that the pilot of the project was very budgetary. There was no money to create the scenery, and he was filmed in an abandoned hospital in Los Angeles.
Crown
In 2017, Entertainment Weekly named The Crown the Most Expensive TV Show in the UK. The start of the film about the life of Queen Elizabeth II in 2016 was so successful that the series was extended for two more seasons. The first episode of the third season will be released in late 2018.
The show's budget is huge. The first season alone cost $ 156 million. And each episode costs about 10 million. It's not hard to guess, the drama is produced by Netflix!
Game of Thrones
In 2007, HBO bought the rights to film the novel by George Martin. A year later, the project began to be filmed, having paid 10 million for the pilot episode (it was shown on the screens in 2011). After 11 years, the budgets of Game of Thrones have grown: for the filming of six episodes of the 8th season, which will be released in the first half of 2019, $ 90 million were allocated.
Back in 2016, The Hollywood Reporter published data on the royalties of leading actors. Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), Keith Harington (Jon Snow), Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen), Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister) and Nikolai Coster-Waldau (Jamie Lannister) were already paid $ 1.1 million per episode. Add to that Keith and Emilia's advertising contracts (they became the faces of Dolce & Gabbana's The Only One in 2017, video of the campaign is here) and you have your dream job! True, with an unstable schedule. The assistant director of Game of Thrones said in his Instagram that filming one battle could last 55 nights.
House of cards
The House of Cards project started at $ 4.5 million per episode. As a result, Netflix spent $ 100 million on the first season. In many ways, the cost is due to the participation of A-list actors Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. True, for Kevin, this project was not the most successful. Despite the fact that for filming in the penultimate, 5th season, he received a million dollars per episode (twice as much Robin), before starting work on the finale, he was fired due to harassment charges. As a result, this fall, only Robin Wright will remain the main heroine of House of Cards. According to the script, Kevin's character dies.
Annealing
A series that doesn't even come close to the popularity of Game of Thrones and Crown, but Netflix is immensely proud of it! And not unreasonable: on the IMDb site, its rating is 8.4. Project scriptwriter Baz Luhrmann, who directed "Moulin Rouge" and "The Great Gatsby," spent 10 years developing the concept. The result is 55 minutes of selected hip-hop, disco and romantic love set against the backdrop of the 70s South Bronx.
The series was never renewed for a second season, spending $ 120 million on the first.
Eighth Sense
Two seasons of the science series The Eighth Sense were filmed with a budget of $ 9 million per episode. The idea to tell the story of a group of strangers living in different parts of the world, but fantastically connected mentally, belongs to the Wachowski sisters. The shooting took place with their characteristic scale: in eight cities of the world and with the involvement of real film professionals who worked on the films "V for Vendetta", "Cloud Atlas" and "Perfumer".
Marco Polo
Another Netflix job that spent $ 180 million on. The series about the great navigator was filmed for two years (from 2014 to 2016), having released 20 spectacular episodes. All this time the team traveled between Italy, Kazakhstan and Malaysia, where the shooting took place.
Fraser
The final of the sitcom about psychiatrist Fraser Crane in 2004 was watched by 33 million people. The series has held the attention of viewers since 1993, during which time actor Kelsey Grammer became a real American hero and received Emmy four times. Realizing that the success of the project rests on him, in the last season, Kelsey asked for an unprecedented fee at that time - $ 1.6 million per episode. The producers went forward, not daring to sacrifice the popularity of one of the best sitcoms of all time.
