[TV] HBO Game of Thrones - Page 1622

On July 26 2017 23:39 brian wrote:
i feel like you're underestimating the costs tbh, this isn't a blockbuster movie with a couple hundred million dollar budget. but they produce it like it is, and so here we are. sooner or later someone's balancing the book. i would find it super hard to believe that their budget for the show amounts to peanuts, personally.

also i feel like perspective bias comes into play in re: biggest cable hit. is it? i'd imagine it's viewership is on par with TWD, and id bet it's budget is multiples higher.

i'd be interested in knowing the reality, but not enough to do the research. sorry.

On July 26 2017 23:59 opisska wrote:
According to wiki, HBO's annual revenue is 5.6 billion dollars, so $100 million is still just less than 2 percent of that. The viewer numbers are pretty tricky, because you can't directly compare it with TWD due to the different business model. I am not really familiar with the US situation, but from what I was able to gather, it's much cheaper to get access to AMC than to HBO. Then, in its own playing field - the "premium cable", GoT seems to be actually the most watched. Anyway, there are several analyses about how it is the most talked about (it's also likely the most pirated) so on top of the money that it makes directly it also makes a pretty good advertisement for HBO (I honestly had no idea that HBO is even still relevant before GoT came around).

On July 27 2017 00:09 killerdog wrote:

That's not how any of this works 0.0

On July 27 2017 01:24 Plansix wrote:
The funding of specific shows is based on their specific ROI, not the entire gross income of HBO. HBO tracks the viewers, the number of people who sign up for HBO for the couple months GoT is on and all other revenue from the series. And that is not 2% of their entire earnings for a year.

GoT is a amazing show, but it is a TV show. The battle of the Bastards is one of the most impressive feats for a television show in history. That was full blown blockbuster quality action. But there are limitations to what they can do. There are not unlimited CGI and special effects experts in the world. And none of them are just sitting around waiting for a job. They work on movies for Marvel or other studios. HBO can’t just throw money at the problem.

On July 27 2017 01:00 bardtown wrote:

It's not a very helpful criticism if you don't explain what you think is wrong with his post. Seems like a reasonable analysis to me. TWD has higher official viewership, but GOT has massively higher unofficial viewership and I think it's invaluable as an advertisement. People who like GOT are very likely to also like Westworld, Rome, Deadwood, The Wire, etc. If you're just talking about the 2% of revenue point then sure, it's not a particularly informative measure.

On July 27 2017 03:16 opisska wrote:


The funding of specific shows is based on exactly what the hell HBO wants. It's a single company so they can distribute their money in any way they want among projects, as long as it is beneficial to HBO as a whole. It's surely up to them to decide whether the insane popularity of the show is worth the investment or not, but there is no hard set rule that the budget can't surpass direct revenue if there are intangible benefits from it. I was merely pointing out that the budget for the show is two orders of magnitude smaller than the entire budget of HBO, so they wouldn't bleed out from it.

The second point is completely nonsensical though. There are plenty of CGI movies being produced every year and GoT is just one of those. Why do you think it gets less priority from the special effects studios than any other movie? Paying customer is a paying customer. You could make the same argument for any other movie that requires CGI and I just don't see a shortage of those lately. And again, I also don't really see anyone even advocating for more CGI scenes in the first place, just for more time for plot development, which can be mostly accomplished by people talking to each other and similar stuff.

And there are not unlimited special effects houses with unlimited experience in all fields that are just chilling, waiting for work. As someone who a big TV and movie production nerd, it isn’t something you just throw money at.

At the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour, HBO programming head Casey Bloys said that all six scripts for the final season of “Game of Thrones” are now in, but that it still hasn’t been decided whether it will air in 2018 or 2019. Bloys says that the network is currently determining the logistics of shooting the final episodes and what the production schedule will be.

“It’s a big season,” Bloys said, “So they’re trying to get a sense of how long they’re going to take to film this.”

The current season of “Game of Thrones” was pushed from a start date in April, when previous seasons of the show have started, to July in order to film scenes in winter. At this year’s SXSW, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss announced that they will write the final four episodes of the series, with Dave Hill writing the season premiere and Bryan Cogman — who wrote this past Sunday’s episode — penning episode 2.

Sound designer Paula Fairfield also revealed at the fan convention Con of Thrones earlier this month that the final episodes could potentially be feature-length, though that won’t be determined until production begins. The season 7 finale, airing August 27, will have a runtime of 82 minutes.

“I imagine they’ll be longer but … I’m not sure [how long],” Bloys said on Wednesday. “We haven’t had that discussion yet because I don’t know how long the episodes are going to be. Two hours per episode seems like it would be excessive, but it’s a great show, so who knows?”

On July 27 2017 11:04 Plansix wrote:
I enjoy the "I'm amazed we even got this far. We are really going to get to finish this. Why not make them all 2 hours and take 2 years shooting them? Fuck it, who cares? This is the pro-wresting of prestige television!"