World’s Most Expensive TV Show Revealed With $400 Million Cost Per Season

When streaming platforms surged in popularity during the pandemic, Hollywood studios were pitched into an arms race to outspend each other on exclusive content which would tempt subscribers. Tens of billions of dollars have been spent since then and one show rules them all.

It didn’t take studios long to realize that their platforms needed tentpole productions. Tentpole is an industry term for a movie which makes so much profit that it can outweigh the losses generated by by riskier, but often more critically-acclaimed, productions. Streaming platforms don’t tend to charge for each show as they offer subscribers access to all their content for a flat fee so the profit of each production can’t be calculated. Instead, streaming tentpoles are productions which are designed to draw in subscribers and they don’t come cheap.

Before streaming was commonplace, HBO kicked off the trend in 2011 when it debuted fantasy series Game of Thrones. Netflix followed suit two years later with the smash hit political thriller House of Cards and within a few months of Disney+ launching in 2019 it featured streaming shows based on its hugely-popular Star Wars and Marvel franchises. So when retail giant Amazon entered the fray with its Prime platform it needed a production which packed even more of a punch.

In 2017 the media industry was left reeling when it came to light that Amazon had paid $250 million to buy the television rights to The Lord of the Rings from the estate of British author JRR Tolkien who wrote the original books in the 1950s.

Amazon’s billionaire boss Jeff Bezos was reportedly personally involved with the negotiations as he is a super fan of the sword and sorcery series which was adapted into six movies by New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson. They grossed a combined $5.9 billion, according to industry analyst Box Office Mojo, and Bezos smelled even more money.

He saw the potential to create a Lord of the Rings spinoff show which could take on Game of Thrones and no expense was spared. Called The Rings of Power, in 2018 the Hollywood Reporter put the cost of its five seasons at $1 billion. However, as we recently revealed in the Daily Mail, almost that much has already been spent on the first two seasons alone.

Set before the time of Tolkien’s trilogy, season one debuted in 2022 and, like the blockbuster movies, it was filmed in New Zealand which lifted the curtain on its costs.

Amazon did not comment on the cost of the show and there is good reason for this. The budgets of streaming productions are usually a closely-guarded secret as studios combine the costs of all of them in their expenses and don’t itemize how much was spent on each one. Shows made in New Zealand are an exceptions as its government reimburses 20% of the money that studios spend in the country. The studios set up separate production companies for each one in order to show how much they cost and these filings shine a spotlight on the spending.

The first season of The Rings Of Power was filmed in New Zealand by GSR Productions, a subsidiary of Reunion Pacific Entertainment, the Canadian company which made the series for Amazon. GSR’s latest financial statements reveal that it cost $226.4 million (NZ$323.2 million) to film season one with a further $124.3 million (NZ$199.5 million) spent on its effects over the year to June 30, 2022, just before the show premiered.

The colossal cost of $350.7 million for season one was thanks to its extravagant effects which recreated armies of orcs marching through sweeping storybook settings. More than 1,500 visual effects artists from 20 studios worked on the show including Weta FX which created the effects for the Lord of the Rings movies.

The vibrant visuals continued in the second season which was shot in the United Kingdom and debuted in August this year. It is understood that the Tolkien estate wanted the series to be shot in the UK from the start as it inspired the original books. Amazon was so captivated by the country that in July this year it bought the film studio outside London where the second season was shot.

Like New Zealand, the UK also offers studios a fiscal incentive for filming there. They get up to 25.5% of their costs reimbursed and set up separate companies for each production they make. The latest financial statements for GSR UK Productions were released last week and reveal that by the time filming for the second season of The Rings of Power ended in June 2023, $458.2 million (£364 million) had been spent on it. They add that this staggering sum was not due to overspending as “at the year end, the television programme being produced had an estimated cost in line with the agreed budget.”

The spending is still set to surge as the second season debuted more than a year after the date of the financial statements and during that time much of the costly digital effects work was done.

The filings reveal that The Rings of Power was handed a $91.9 million (£72.8 million) reimbursement and the production had a magic touch on the UK. Studios spend on local services such as props suppliers, security and catering. Filming also keeps local workers in jobs and the financial statements show that a peak of 522 staff worked on The Rings Of Power with total pay coming to $35.7 million (£28.3 million).

The total budget gives the show a massive cost per minute of $850,000 which is almost as much as the $1.3 million (£1 million) per hour minimum threshold required in order to qualify for the reimbursement. It remains to be seen whether it has paid off.

Only 37% of US viewers who started watching the first season saw it through to the end according to the Hollywood Reporter. The second season didn’t fare much better as data from streaming analytics firm Samba TV showed within four days of its premiere, the first episode was watched by 900,000 US households which is about half the size of the audience of the season one pilot.

The show found itself in the middle of a fierce row as its diverse cast of actors angered many fans of the books who claimed that Tolkien’s masterpiece had been updated for the modern world in ways that altered the integrity of the original. It contributed to audiences giving the two seasons an average rating of 49% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes whilst Game Of Thrones scored 85%.

“Given the wild costs of Rings of Power, subdued viewing figures (at least in the US and the UK), and the perennial inability of Amazon to create pathways between Prime Video and shopping, it’s highly unlikely that Amazon is getting a strong return on its investment in the show,” says Tom Harrington of media researchers Enders Analysis.

However, he adds that “the main purpose of Prime (alongside peripheral things like making the overall Prime subscription even more stickier for consumers) is to sell third-party video subscriptions (i.e. Prime Video Channels like Paramount+, Discovery+ etc) and rent films – original Prime content is a hook to get viewers there in the first place.”

In short, the show’s total audience isn’t as important as the hype that it generates and in this regard, there’s little doubt that The Rings of Power has cast a powerful spell.