10 Most Expensive TV Episodes of the Decade

10 Most Expensive TV Episodes of the Decade

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This decade introduced iconic TV shows with insane budgets. From Game of Thrones to The Crown, let’s take a look at the most expensive episodes!

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10 Most Expensive TV Episodes of the Decade

We are less than a month away from a new year, and also a new decade. But before we all pull out our symmetrical 2020 glasses to watch the ball drop on television, there is still time to reminisce and appraise the ten years that are being left behind. What better way to say goodbye to 2019 than by examining not the most successful, well-reviewed, or classic television that came into our lives over the past decade, but by looking at where creators spent the most money?

What episodes over the past ten years were the most expensive to create? Did the insane amounts of money spent all pay off? That’s for viewers, and future critics to decide. Let’s take a look!

10 The Get Down

10 Most Expensive TV Episodes of the Decade

The 11 (though originally planned to be 13) episode mini-series on Netflix cost nearly $15,800,000 an episode. Haven’t heard of the show? It wasn’t bad, it just got lost in the avalanche of ever-present Netflix original content. All about music in the South Bronx during the 1970’s the high price tag came mainly because of behind the camera talent.

Baz Luhrmann of Moulin Rouge fame created the show and needed to musical assistance of Grandmaster Flash and Kurtis Blow to work with the young cast. Unfortunately for the talented cast and crew, the money did not buy an audience.

9 The Big Bang Theory

10 Most Expensive TV Episodes of the Decade

It was cast salary negotiations that sent this half-hour sitcom over the edge around 2013. With the main cast of five, Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar all making nearly $1 million an episode the show is one of the shortest (in terms of run time) but still costs approximately $9 million per episode to make.

The show also has to pay royalties on its theme song to The Barenaked Ladies.

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8 Marco Polo

10 Most Expensive TV Episodes of the Decade

Marco Polo, the television show on Netflix, could not drum up the same riches the famed explorer found on his trade route. The historical hour-long drama lasted only two seasons, beginning in 2014, budgeting $9 million per episode.

Both seasons were flops for the streaming giant, leaving them not only on this list but also in an incredible amount of debt once the show as finally canceled.

7 Sense8

10 Most Expensive TV Episodes of the Decade

Netflix made the same $9 million per episode investment in its 2015 science fiction drama series, Sense8, from the creators of The Matrix. Besides the talent, Netflix was also paying for filming on locations across the globe. The premise behind the program were people across the globe who could connect emotionally and mentally.

The show lasted two seasons, popular in part because of its very diverse cast, and creating its own very devoted fan base. Proving itself a much more successful investment than the ill-fated Marco Polo, no network or streaming platform seems to have its programming down to a perfect science.

6 The Crown

10 Most Expensive TV Episodes of the Decade

Coming in at just over $13 million is The Crown. Which episode of this three-season Netflix hit cost the crown jewels? Well, all of them really. It is very expensive to cloth such a large cast in the very lavish period pieces to which the monarchy and viewers have become accustomed.

Oddly enough, it’s this show, focused on real-life royalty, that sits at the bottom of the list we are making. Shocking what a few real-life locations can do to keep the budget from ballooning (in comparison anyway).

5 Game of Thrones

10 Most Expensive TV Episodes of the Decade

With its final season, HBO seems to have offered the entirety of its budget to creators Dan and Dave to do with as they pleased. While the results didn’t please the Game of Thrones fan base, they did make one of the most expensive shows, and episodes of the decade. Coming in at over $15 million dollars Season 8’s “The Battle of Winterfell” comes in as the most expensive (and the longest) of any Game of Thrones episode ever.

Fans complained that not enough of that astronomical budget was spent on lighting, but thanks to some online edits some of the gritty details and fabulous acting have come into focus over the months following the episode’s debut.

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4 Terra Nova

10 Most Expensive TV Episodes of the Decade

The 2011 Steven Spielberg produced dystopian dinosaur epic sounded fabulous on paper and in advertising. Survivors of earth’s future are sent to its past where the planet has not yet been destroyed. The trick? Dinosaurs obviously still roam.

The pilot of Terra Nova cost about $14 million and didn’t set up the program to outlast its first season. The pilot was two hours long and filmed on location in Australia, but that’s still quite expensive for a show, even a Spielberg one.

3 Boardwalk Empire

10 Most Expensive TV Episodes of the Decade

Apparently, when it comes to famous movie directors working for television, Martin Scorcese can ask for even more than Steven Spielberg. Scorcese directed the pilot episode of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire in 2010.

That episode set HBO back over $18 million. The boardwalk of the title cost a cool $5 million all on its own. Critical acclaim and a five-season run just might have satisfied HBO with their very large investment.

2 Westworld

10 Most Expensive TV Episodes of the Decade

HBO enters our list for the third time with Westworld. It’s obvious the network is willing to invest in its properties and they have been relatively successful thus far. The 90 minute pilot for Westworld cost executives about $25 million altogether.

The series is about to premiere its third season and has received huge amounts of press for its special effects and sci-fi storytelling. Once again HBO’s money has paid off in viewership and word of mouth. Fans will have to wait for the new decade to see where the story is headed.

1 Vinyl

Here at the top of the list is the reason not even HBO can get cocky about the money it spends on any of the shows they decide to put on the air. Looking once again at Martin Scorcese and his success creating the world of Boardwalk Empire, the company also called in Mick Jagger to work on this series about music and the business behind it during the 1970s.

The two-hour pilot cost HBO over $30 million, and the series never made it past its first season, even with a cast that included Bobby Cannavale, Olivia Wide, and Ray Romano.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/most-expensive-tv-show-episodes-of-the-decade/

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