Coming To a Streaming Service Near You: Shows Costing as Much as Big-Budget Movies (wsj.com) 81
As Walt Disney, AT&T's WarnerMedia and Apple prepare to enter the crowded streaming-entertainment market, they are racing to stand out with eye-catching shows that cost as much for a season as a big-budget movie [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: These new services are hoping their planned television epics will capture the cultural conversation, like "Game of Thrones" did. They are also hoping to convince subscribers that their offerings are worth paying for in a market dominated by Netflix, HBO and Hulu. The competition is prompting newcomers to shell out between $8 million and $15 million an episode, significantly more than what the average TV show used to cost. For a single season, after including marketing and other expenses, the total can easily exceed $150 million -- or roughly what it costs to put a new "Spider-Man" movie in theaters nationwide.
When Netflix began making "House of Cards" in 2013 at $4.5 million an episode, it looked like a costly bet. Now, Disney has built intergalactic-desert landscapes for the "Star Wars" spinoff "The Mandalorian," whose cost for an episode approaches $15 million, according to people familiar with the matter. Amazon.com spent $250 million just for the rights to develop a "Lord of the Rings" series. Apple signed up "Aquaman" star Jason Momoa for its fantasy series "See," while Showtime has the videogame adaptation "Halo" and Warner Bros. prepares Frank Herbert's "Dune." With massive casts, exotic filming locations and copious special effects, budgets have ballooned to amounts once considered unfathomable for a TV show. One driving factor, executives say, is that high-profile TV shows are offered up next to theatrical films available to stream on the same service, so original programming can't risk looking like B-material next to the movies.
When Netflix began making "House of Cards" in 2013 at $4.5 million an episode, it looked like a costly bet. Now, Disney has built intergalactic-desert landscapes for the "Star Wars" spinoff "The Mandalorian," whose cost for an episode approaches $15 million, according to people familiar with the matter. Amazon.com spent $250 million just for the rights to develop a "Lord of the Rings" series. Apple signed up "Aquaman" star Jason Momoa for its fantasy series "See," while Showtime has the videogame adaptation "Halo" and Warner Bros. prepares Frank Herbert's "Dune." With massive casts, exotic filming locations and copious special effects, budgets have ballooned to amounts once considered unfathomable for a TV show. One driving factor, executives say, is that high-profile TV shows are offered up next to theatrical films available to stream on the same service, so original programming can't risk looking like B-material next to the movies.
How to epically miss the point, by: Disney (Score:1)
I don't care how much they cost if they are shit, and thus far, most 'original' shows are shit. It's the writing, stupid.
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GoT seasons 7 and 8 should help blunt the interest in anything produced by a major streaming studio....
Spot on (Score:2)
Lately I've been more entertained by 1970's-'80's low budget BBC science fiction like Dr. Who and Blakes 7. Why? Because when the budgets are that low they HAD to write interesting plots and characters to survive.
Need more episodes not fanciers graphics (Score:1)
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I disagree. Most of the 22 episode shows have too much filler. I tend to think 8-12 episodes is good for a season, but I like the long story arc shows. Most of these shows don't have one episode a month. They have longer hiatuses.
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I definitely disagree with this. HBO popularized (perhaps others as well) the smaller, more focused season. This allowed for shows/series to tell the story they wanted. Forcing 22+ episodes does not always make for worthy television.
Now, what we are seeing is more coupled series. Netflix had all of those marvel shows, which intertwined, and then intersected for an entire season. This provides a similar option to what you were suggesting, but without forcing a certain episode count.
Dune is to be a 2-part theatrical release movie (Score:2)
I'm greatly looking forward to this movie (which to me seems unfilmable), but it is not going to be on TV despite what the linked article is saying.
Back in the day... (Score:2)
Re:Back in the day... (Score:5, Funny)
West Wing was also reportedly decent, unlike the movie-candy-equivalent crap like Game of Thrones or Twilight.
Make it dark and have a lot of important characters get killed, double-crossed, or drama'd, and you have instant complex and deep storyline.
You clearly have not seen Game of Thrones.
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Battlestar Galactica (Score:2)
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They were planning on Battlestar Galactica being a series of three made for TV movies, not a series of 24 episodes. So that's how it was budgeted and why it was so expensive. They did end up editing the 24 eps into 12 TV movies after it was cancelled
And it will be like cable $100/mo to get most show (Score:3)
And it will be like cable $100/mo to get most shows just hope you don't have to buy espn 3-4 times.
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Yep, put the channels people actually want in the most expensive tier and keep the lower tiers mostly trash channels and drink in the profit.
The upcoming glut or streaming services are going to have it rough when people sub to one for a month, watch what they want, then drop it and nead to the next for one month, drop that one, move to the next, lather, rinse, repeat....
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Isn't that what everyone has been doing for years anyway? I mean why stay subbed when there is nothing left to watch, and when cancelling is so easy? When I sub to Netflix I instantly cancel so I don't even have to remember to do it a month later.
I suppose the next logical step is to make cancelling extremely difficult, like cable companies do.
This is the new norm (Score:2)
All streaming services will be producing pretty expensive shows going forward, but it looks like it makes a ton of sense if you look at the rewards.
Sure the Mandalorian will be expensive, but it will be a huge draw to the service. It's easy to see how Disney could recover way more income from streaming subscribers than they would see from a theater.
The estimates of the number of people that watched "Bird Box" on Netflix were along the lines of 26 million people in the first week. That is way more people
Next up - books & imagination make a comeback (Score:1)
I just enjoyed a series of chapters with an epic story-line, a cast of thousands, local and exotic locations, heart-wrenching and engaging story, excellent dialogue, deep immersion, etc. that was entirely convincing and thoroughly enjoyable, and it all cost next-to-nothing to make because it was a book written by one person, and all that was driven and created in my imagination (plus there are more seasons (books) to come). And it was free from the library to boot!
I think the costs of streaming and producin
Maybe if they spent 15 mil per episode (Score:5, Insightful)
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Honestly, my experience with the Netflix originals is they did get good writing, and then they did get good actors.
Netflix lets these shows have a pretty wide latitude to make the show, and I saw an article not so long ago where a film-maker was basically saying that once Netflix says "yes", they then say "go and make it".
They don't have umpteen people making suggestions to "improve" it, they don't let the idiots with focus groups tell them what to change. The
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Netflix's Lost in Space remake was nice, but they're gonna need to replace the whole cast for season 2 since they're all dead of old age by now ;)
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You have to wonder how the last season of GoT was so badly written when the budget was clearly pretty high. I guess that the showrunners were too trusted and didn't get enough review before committing to scripts.
Or Read The Book. (Score:2)
Way cheaper to just Read Dune.
I wish that a bigger % of money went to writers (Score:5, Interesting)
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And let the writers actually write, don't focus group a show/movie to death in hope of making it appeal to everyone.
Big budgets shouldn't be the goal (Score:2)
When I see the drivel the sometimes comes out of hollywood, then see what it cost, I'm like... how?
Then we have a-okay Netflix and Hulu originals that are made for a fraction of the cost.
There is too much wasteful spending in business. Perhaps production compani
Canceling every streaming service near you: me (Score:2)
Why not, if they are better? (Score:3)
I don't want big-budget TV shows. I don't want your stupid "Originals" that you only make so you don't have to deal with licensing content from other people.
In the case of Netflix I've enjoyed a number of originals from Netflix way more than what Hollywood has been putting out for a while. I almost never bother to go to the movies anymore.
This past weekend I could have gone to a theater and slogged through Endgame, or sat at home with snacks and watch Strange Things 3. I made the better choice and went w
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In the case of Netflix I've enjoyed a number of originals from Netflix way more than what Hollywood has been putting out for a while. I almost never bother to go to the movies anymore.
So far, every Netflix original I've seen has been crap. I still agree with you though. The NF crap is still better than the Hollywood crap.
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I'd subscribe (Score:2)
to a service that picked up/continued/finished without Foxing out:
Terminate: Sarah Conners
2014 Forever
More Stargate Universe, or new (quality) Stargate series.
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I don't want to get involved in a show until it's already been picked up for a third season... which is not a good recipe for getting to the third season. Not sure how to fix this problem.
I'm looking forward to this, but ... (Score:3)
...they all promise us the New Lost, the New Breaking Bad, The New Game of Thrones, the New Sopranos, the New ...
Nobody knows anything, if they did, we would have 25 Breaking Bads running right now.
But they don't so it's a game of 'hit and miss a lot'
It's almost worse (Score:3)
HBO isn't even promising anything of substance new, they are promoting original "Friends" as a benefit!
There are only so many directors and actors that can produce amazing work, it'll be interesting to see if any one service can land a majority of good output, or if it's purely a chance game and the higher number of shows you fund the more good ones result in absolute terms just from sheer mass of effort.
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It will come down to variety and being able to attract different demographics. They won’t all try to hit all demographics, but enough overlap to be relevant.
A reality show or fitness program does not need the same type of talent as LoR or whatever. Some specialist types of services on the production end might be more of a constraint.
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And the good stuff often gets cancelled anyway.
Firefly is the most well known example (probably followed by Angel), and more recently stuff like Travellers, all the Netflix DCU series... I have a feeling The Orville may be next, season 2 didn't do all that well despite a few decent episodes.
One of the most attractive things about Netflix used to be that they rescued cancelled shows, but not any more it seems.
Only a matter of time (Score:2)
still not movie quality (Score:2)
one season may cost as much as a high budget feature movie, but that still means the movie will be a better quality as that budget is compressed into 1.5-2 hours, while a the same budget for a show's season is maybe 10 (or more) episodes of an hour.
ofcourse you need to wonder why a show would need to cost that much to develop. shows don't have the same purpose as movies, you can have more character building, more in depth stories, none of these things need to cost that much money. shiny fx are not that impo