Breaking Bad
Game of Thrones
The Sopranos
The Wire
Friends
The Simpsons
Mad Men
Better Call Saul
Stranger Things
Seinfield
These are some of the world’s most successful TV series of all time. Depending on who is doing the list and what criteria they are using, the above can be scrambled back and forth with one or two additions and subtractions.
But we are all agreed that Game of Thrones was one of the best steps that HBO put forward. Was it the best written, best produced and a story with the best twist? It sure was and the audience loved it all, lapped it all up, owned it and even created predictive posts or videos to help further tell the story.
There are hordes of YouTube videos that explain the family histories, the characters profiles, the twists, the expectations and all are mind boggling.
Top rate industry stakeholders, like George Lucas and others, appeared on location to identify with the series.
Aside the massive creative talents of the assembled Cast and Crew, great imaginative writers, production designers, directors, producers etc.
Was there something extra, a kind of an X-factor that made this series what it became?
In the business side of things the studio from the word go understood the need to put money, good money, in the production.
And they did exactly that, cost per episode of the Game of Thrones series:
- With a total show budget of $1.5 Billion, the show has earned $3.1 Billion through HBO subscriptions alone. All eight seasons, spanning 73 episodes and bringing together 566 characters, cost HBO a mere $30.90 per viewer.
- The Dan Weiss and David Benioff produced Game of Thrones had an average cost of production for the popular HBO TV series put at $6 million per episode.
- Comparatively, the cost for other cable TV shows is about $2 million per episode.
- Entertainment Weekly authoritatively put the highest production budget, before season eight, at $10 million.
- That figure significantly increased for the production of Season eight.
- Episode 1 of Season 8 premiered on Sunday, April 14, 2019, to the excitement of millions of fans across the world. A sigh of relief for the long wait.
Variety magazine claims that each episode of the season finale gulped about $15 million. The previous two seasons’ episodes had hit $10 million as production cost, rising by $4 million after the other seasons’ episodes gulped $6 million each.
These figures weren’t exactly confirmed by HBO, but David Benioff earlier spoke of how the Season two penultimate installment, “Blackwater,” cost more than expected.
The episode cost $8 million due to its extensive battle scene and larger-than-life props, including a full-sized replica of a 14th-century battleship.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
You will ask me if the expenditure was worth it? Hear this!
The subscribers paid $15 per month or $170 all season for HBO, during the series.
There were over 41 million viewers in the USA, with 142 million subscribers worldwide, and HBO’s subscription revenue hit 5.5 billion U.S. dollars for the first time in 2017.
According to New York Times , this TV series generates “slightly more than $1 billion annually,” as compared to Showtime which is only producing $692 million.
Being an insanely popular show, episodes of Game of Thrones averages a budget of $6 million per episode.
Before deciding to end the show, HBO had already gotten it’s money back and mapped out future revenue from it, from DVD sales, Franchise syndication, Merchandise, Video game (Game of Throne: Conquest) and so on.
It’s also making residual income via syndicated subscriptions, in the US they license it through cable and satellite providers, internationally through their pay TV providers, and now digitally direct-to-consumers through its ‘HBO Now’ service. (It also licenses content to other premium pay TV channels
Are we ready for the big league in film production here in Nollywood?
