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Update on D&D TV Show -- Underdark, Small, 6-10 Episodes
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8239834" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>I very much doubt that, given that it will necessarily be a fairly CGI-heavy show.</p><p></p><p>WandaVision's likely budget was in the $100-200m range (I can go into details if you want - my personal estimate is probably around $152m given the actual length of the episodes and so on), which is pretty typical for shows of this kind (and compares favourably to movies about similar subjects, in terms of $ per runtime). For example, Netflix's Altered Carbon was $150m for S1 (S2 unknown but I bet it was a lot less because it looked cheap and made excessive re-use of sets despite being on another planet), and CBS' Star Trek Discovery is somewhere north of $100m per season. Most Amazon Prime originals have a budget of $9-10m/episode so are in a similar ballpark (The Boys, High Castle were both $10m/episode). Mandalorian was $15m/episode (and er... it doesn't consistently look like it, sadly... imho anyway), GoT was similar ($15m-ish per ep). Amazon's LotR show allegedly is looking at a budget of $1bn+ over 5 seasons, so probably about $200m/season, which is really not that much more than one might expect. Indeed it might be a little low. I could go on and on, but realistically you're not making a show like this for less than $10m/episode unless you're willing to have production values so low that they'll be noticeably bad to casual viewers.</p><p></p><p>Kolstad hasn't announced a network yet, but it's hardly material. I mean, it might not get made - but if it does get made, the odds are very good that it'll be looking at $10m/episode or more - assuming it's on a either a streaming platform or a major US network. They're all in the same ballpark.</p><p></p><p>Now maybe for you "a small fraction" is "2/3rds" or something or "1/2", and in that case it's mere semantics, but for me "a small fraction would usually mean 1/5th or less and you'd be really stretching the term to get to say 1/3rd. I would suspect this show, if it gets made, is looking at a real budget of $10m+ which is well over half the likely per episode for WandaVision (allegedly it was "up to" $25m/episode, but given the longest episode is nearly twice the real runtime as the shortest, and most were closer to the shorter end, aaaaaaand the last episode had more CGI than all the rest by miles, I think we can guess it averaged at like $16-17m/episode).</p><p></p><p>If you tried to make it on like $5m/episode it would end up looking like a bad SyFy show, note.</p><p></p><p>EDIT - I'd note that the primary Underdark setting is perhaps actually attractive to bean-counters, because whilst it means there will be a significant minimum spend on on sets and CGI, it also means that shooting will be on soundstages (or whatever we call them these days) and greenscreens, not on location, and that's a hell of a lot cheaper than shooting on location at the same level of quality, and it's a lot easier to contain maximum expenditure shooting on soundstages rather than on location. Part of why previous fantasy shows have been expensive is heavy location shooting (yes, you can do it in Europe, but it still ain't cheap).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8239834, member: 18"] I very much doubt that, given that it will necessarily be a fairly CGI-heavy show. WandaVision's likely budget was in the $100-200m range (I can go into details if you want - my personal estimate is probably around $152m given the actual length of the episodes and so on), which is pretty typical for shows of this kind (and compares favourably to movies about similar subjects, in terms of $ per runtime). For example, Netflix's Altered Carbon was $150m for S1 (S2 unknown but I bet it was a lot less because it looked cheap and made excessive re-use of sets despite being on another planet), and CBS' Star Trek Discovery is somewhere north of $100m per season. Most Amazon Prime originals have a budget of $9-10m/episode so are in a similar ballpark (The Boys, High Castle were both $10m/episode). Mandalorian was $15m/episode (and er... it doesn't consistently look like it, sadly... imho anyway), GoT was similar ($15m-ish per ep). Amazon's LotR show allegedly is looking at a budget of $1bn+ over 5 seasons, so probably about $200m/season, which is really not that much more than one might expect. Indeed it might be a little low. I could go on and on, but realistically you're not making a show like this for less than $10m/episode unless you're willing to have production values so low that they'll be noticeably bad to casual viewers. Kolstad hasn't announced a network yet, but it's hardly material. I mean, it might not get made - but if it does get made, the odds are very good that it'll be looking at $10m/episode or more - assuming it's on a either a streaming platform or a major US network. They're all in the same ballpark. Now maybe for you "a small fraction" is "2/3rds" or something or "1/2", and in that case it's mere semantics, but for me "a small fraction would usually mean 1/5th or less and you'd be really stretching the term to get to say 1/3rd. I would suspect this show, if it gets made, is looking at a real budget of $10m+ which is well over half the likely per episode for WandaVision (allegedly it was "up to" $25m/episode, but given the longest episode is nearly twice the real runtime as the shortest, and most were closer to the shorter end, aaaaaaand the last episode had more CGI than all the rest by miles, I think we can guess it averaged at like $16-17m/episode). If you tried to make it on like $5m/episode it would end up looking like a bad SyFy show, note. EDIT - I'd note that the primary Underdark setting is perhaps actually attractive to bean-counters, because whilst it means there will be a significant minimum spend on on sets and CGI, it also means that shooting will be on soundstages (or whatever we call them these days) and greenscreens, not on location, and that's a hell of a lot cheaper than shooting on location at the same level of quality, and it's a lot easier to contain maximum expenditure shooting on soundstages rather than on location. Part of why previous fantasy shows have been expensive is heavy location shooting (yes, you can do it in Europe, but it still ain't cheap). [/QUOTE]
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