The most expensive TV show ever made had a budget of Rs 3800 crore with each episode costing more than the biggest Indian blockbusters.
Television shows around the world are now rivalling big films in terms of scale and bidgets. In fact, the biggest TV shows and web series made internationally can put Hollywood blockbusters to shame in terms of their budget. The most expensive TV show ever made had a total landing cost of over a billion dollars, with each episode costing a whopping $58 million. Incidentally, this is more than the budget of most Indian films, even the big blockbusters.
The world’s most expensive TV show
The 2022 Amazon Prime Video series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is the most expensive TV show ever made. As per Deadline, the show cost over a billion dollars in production and marketing costs, coming out to around Rs 8300 crore. Collider put the show’s production cost at $465 million (over Rs 3800 crore).
This means that each of the eight episodes of the massive show cost around Rs 480 crore. This figure is higher than the production budget of some of the biggest Indian films like Brahmastra Part One (Rs 400 crore), Salaar (Rs 270 crore), KGF (Rs 100 crore), Animal (Rs 100 crore), and Dunki (Rs 120 crore). In fact, only three Indian films – Kalki 2898 AD (Rs 600 crore), Adipurush (Rs 550 crore), and RRR (Rs 500 crore) – have budgets higher than the per episode cost of The Rings of Power.
Why was Rings of Power so expensive?
Screenrant reported that mismanagement and reshoots were the main reason for the Rings of Power’s budget ballooning beyond control. The report stated that the first season of the show was initially meant to cost around $150 million but ended up being made for over thrice as much. “It's hard to think of a reason for Rings of Power's ballooning budget other than it being mismanaged, wrote ScreenRant’s Grant Bullert. The show’s expansive sets, large scale, extensive VFX work, and a huge global marketing campaign all contributed to this figure.
Why was The Rings of Power trolled?
The Rings of Power is based on the work of JRR Tolkien and is set thousands of years before the events of Peter Jackson’s LOTR movie trilogy. Given that LOTR enjoys a global fandom – both with the books and the films – the web series had big shoes to fill. And when the show decided to tinker a little with the source material, not many were happy and it was review bombed and trolled. While most critics and casual viewers found the show decent enough, the trolls were unrelenting. Despite that, Prime Video maintained the show was a massive success in terms of viewership and a second season was renewed immediately.
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 "A still from The Rings of Power")
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