High-end production and exclusive content have become key weapons in the new fight for subscriptions

As Hollywood stars and production crew line up for the increasingly astronomical rewards on offer to make high-end TV programmes, the blockbuster movie is facing a new challenger: the first $20m per episode TV show.

Exclusive content has become the key weapon in the battle between rivals such as Netflix, Amazon, pay-TV companies and entertainment giants such as Disney to win the hearts – and wallets – of viewers.

Budgets are spiralling as the economics of the new global market has ushered TV into a golden age that has made previously unthinkable production costs viable.

The final season of Game of Thrones pushed the bar to $15m (£10.8m) per episode as the world’s most popular show signs off with a special effects-laden bang when it returns next year.

HBO’s hit show has supplanted Netflix and Sony’s lavish period drama The Crown, which had a $10m per episode average spend, as the most expensive show currently on TV. 

Netflix, which has upped its programming spend by $1bn to $8bn this year, has said it could be tempted to back a $20m-an-hour production but it would need to attract big audience numbers to work. 

Paul Lee, head of research for technology, media and telecoms at Deloitte, says a drama series averaging $20m per episode in production costs will happen in 2018. “There is so much competition out there. The more money you have chasing productions the higher the prices will go. The new reality is there are new companies with massive, global customer bases – Amazon, Netflix and now Apple coming in – that can afford these big budgets.”

This week, Disney confirmed it was working on “a few” TV series based on Star Wars for its upcoming streaming service, as the entertainment giant looks to bring the $1bn-plus box office magic of the movie franchise to the small screen.

The Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s edict to find a Game of Thrones-style hit for its Prime Video service to keep up with Netflix panicked executives into striking a $250m deal for the rights to bring Lord of the Rings to TV. Factor in $750m on stars and production for five seasons and the re-imagining of JRR Tolkien’s fantasy world is likely to cost $20m per episode.

Apple’s bid to become a major global streaming force has also spurred a further round of cost inflation. It recently outbid even Netflix’s seemingly bottomless pockets for a TV series starring Reese Witherspoon, who on top of her Hollywood star premium now commands astronomical fees following the success of HBO’s Emmy-winning Big Little Lies, and Jennifer Aniston.

“Whenever there is talk about inflation in costs we tend to think about stars but it is really across the entire production crew,” says Lee. “From set builders and speech coaches to writers and directors; it is about supply and demand and all of them are in great demand for film and TV work and that means big cost increases.”

In the UK, budgets for high-end TV, defined as costing more than £1m an hour, have exploded from £430m to almost £1bn per year over the last five years. High-end TV production in the UK has rapidly grown to half the size of the £1.9bn industry for making Hollywood and independent films.

Jeremy Darroch, the chief executive of Sky, intends to boost the £3bn it spends on making and buying shows. Darroch says the mechanics of spending on exclusive programming works out far more cost-effective than, say, the £1.5bn annual cost of rights to Premier League football.

“We plan to scale our budget over the next few years,” says Darroch. “The good thing about original [productions] rather than acquired sports rights is that it is show by show. The costs may aggregate to a big sum but each individual show’s costs are a lot less. Britannia cost £37m gross, but two-thirds of that will defray by selling elsewhere to other markets [125 territories]. The net cost relative to other things is relatively efficient.”

James Richardson, the co-founder of Vertigo Films, the maker of Britannia, sees no sign of the market topping out at “peak TV” as demand for big budget programmes eats into the film industry.

Vertigo Films built its reputation making independent films, such as Gareth Edwards’s Monsters and Bronson starring Tom Hardy, but about five years ago made the decision to get out of the struggling market for smaller budget films.

“Something changed and broadcasters were all asking us to get involved in TV,” says Richardson, who worked with a $6m-per-episode budget to make Britannia.

“We needed to move with the times. What is going on in [high-end] TV is mirroring what was going on at the height of independent film. There is a mass of places to get financed; it seems to be the place most exciting creatively; we are finding ourselves in a world we know well. If someone said to me here is $20m per episode, I’m not going to say no.”

The most expensive TV shows
1 Lord of the Rings (maybe) With Amazon paying $250m just for the global rights, expectations put the total cost for making five series at $1bn. On a typical 10-episode run that would make it the first $20m-an-episode TV show.

2 The Get Down Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down had a budget that hit up to $16m for some episodes. It was cancelled after one season.

3 Game of Thrones The fantasy juggernaut averaged about $10m an episode but the final series will mean fewer episodes (six), longer in length with an average budget of $15m.

4 The Crown The lavish Netflix/Sony period drama reportedly costs between $10m and $13m an episode.

5 Band of Brothers The executive producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks were behind the TV mini-series, with a $12.5m budget per episode.

6 ER At its peak George Clooney and friends made the medical drama worth $13m an episode.

7 Friends The hit show cost an eye-watering $10m an episode. But with low production costs it was the cast’s $1m-per-person fees that made it so pricey.

8 Rome HBO took the “tough decision” to cancel the BBC co-production, admitting that the $9.7m that made it look so good was not sustainable beyond the first series.

9 Sense8 At $9m per episode Netflix decided that the fanbase was “not large enough to support the economics of something that big” and cancelled it after two series.

10 Marco Polo Netflix spent $9m an episode for two seasons before finally pulling the plug with the production reportedly resulting in a $200m loss.

• Boardwalk Empire An honourable mention for the most expensive single episode made ever. HBO spent $18m on the pilot. Each episode cost about $5m.