Do you know that Marco Polo(netflix) has much bigger budget than GOT?

[King of thrones]

The first season had a budget of $90 million for 10 episodes.

If the poor netflix can make a medieval tv show with this kind of budget, why HBO with almost 10x bigger profit than netflix can't do the same with a series that is the most watched and profitable in history of HBO? I mean, for the first 4 seasons they had $60 million dollars budget for 10 episodes. Unlike netflix they wouldn't have risked anything because they already knew that the series was a succes . Yet they didn't increased its budget for the last seasons.

I am really sick of off screen battles and many other things they left out because of the budget. I wonder what will they do in the next seasons when the actors will start to ask for more money and the Dragons, White Walkers and the big armies will be everywhere.

[Gregor Clegane's head]

HBO had a huge budget for Rome but that's what ultimately killed it. Probably scares HBO to give shows massive budgets now. Hopefully D&D and GRRM can convince them otherwise... :(

Marco Polo is pretty crappy from what I have seen too, nowhere near the quality of GOT despite the budget.

[midi]

The problem with Marco Polo is that it sucks n*ts. Doesn't matter how much money you shovel into a crappy series. It won't make it good, just less crappy because many scenes can be made to look good.

[Khal-a-bunga]

Game of Thrones has seen a budget increase every season since the first. It hasn't been budgeted at $60 million for all five seasons, only season one. And with HBO, it's about spending that money wisely. They're getting more bang for their buck by shooting in countries that provide them incentives, stretching the worth of each dollar spent.

But, more importantly, HBO has a lot of content that they produce. This year alone they aired...

True Detective

Girls

Looking

Real Time with Bill Maher

Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel

Doll & Em

Vice

Game of Thrones

Silicon Valley

Veep

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

The Normal Heart

True Blood

The Leftovers

Jonah From Tonga

Boardwalk Empire

Olive Kittridge

Sonic Highways

The Newsroom

The Comeback

Getting On

That doesn't include any of their documentaries, sports programming, adult programming, etc. Netflix has aired a total of seven (or maybe eight) shows. And for the $90 million they spent on Marco Polo, what did they get in return? A amateurishly written, badly acted, awkwardly paced GoT wanna'-be. Doesn't seem like money well spent.

[Colonel Green]

Game of Thrones' budget has increased every year, and will increase further.

Marco Polo does have some impressive stuff, though -- I think it's indicative of how much of GOT's budget goes into dragon CGI, etc.

[King of thrones]

Game of Thrones has seen a budget increase every season since the first. It hasn't been budgeted at $60 million for all five seasons, only season one. And with HBO, it's about spending that money wisely. They're getting more bang for their buck by shooting in countries that provide them incentives, stretching the worth of each dollar spent.

That doesn't include any of their documentaries, sports programming, adult programming, etc. Netflix has aired a total of seven (or maybe eight) shows. And for the $90 million they spent on Marco Polo, what did they get in return? A amateurishly written, badly acted, awkwardly paced GoT wanna'-be. Doesn't seem like money well spent.

Marco polo is without any doubt a fail. It is not bad, but is far from being really good. GOT is on another level indeed. Anyway, just imagine what GOT creators and hbo could've done with a bigger budget.

P.S: Is there any legit information that GOT had a bigger budget for the last seasons than $60 million? I searched everywhere and I only found $6 million per episode or $60 million per season. Thank you.

[Mr Fixit]

I'd think GoT is by now pretty close to that 90 million mark what with all the yearly budget increases.

[Mingolla]

It is not that bad show. It have a weak writing, but rest of it is pretty good - actors, directors, production values. I noticed few familiar names known from GoT (Alik Sakharov, Nina Gold etc.). It remember me on Vikings. Its first season also had a feeling "Discovery Channel try to do GoT and fail", but Vikings become awesome in its second season. It can be similar with Marco Polo, i already found the second half of season much better then the first half.

[Colonel Green]

P.S: Is there any legit information that GOT had a bigger budget for the last seasons than $60 million

The producers have talked about increased budgets every year.

Moreover, all you would have to do to know that the budget has increased is to watch the show itself. The production level of the fourth season is self-evidently on a different level than the first; indeed, the first season looks rather cheap these days by comparison, one of its only notable flaws.

[King of thrones]

The producers have talked about increased budgets every year.

Moreover, all you would have to do to know that the budget has increased is to watch the show itself. The production level of the fourth season is self-evidently on a different level than the first; indeed, the first season looks rather cheap these days by comparison, one of its only notable flaws.

So what is your guess right now? I mean for the actual budget of GOT.

[Mr Fixit]

75-80 maybe?

[Aemond's Eye]

It is not that bad show. It have a weak writing, but rest of it is pretty good - actors, directors, production values. I noticed few familiar names known from GoT (Alik Sakharov, Nina Gold etc.). It remember me on Vikings. Its first season also had a feeling "Discovery Channel try to do GoT and fail", but Vikings become awesome in its second season. It can be similar with Marco Polo, i already found the second half of season much better then the first half.

I think the problem with Marco Polo is that it's not about Marco Polo really, but because they're using him as the gateway into Kublai Khan's kingdom they've greatly altered historical events and timeliness to fit in with when Polo was at court. For the budget they had we could have had a series built around the Toluid Civil War and the background to it - instead we got one fight scene, really.

I appreciate that some events have to be sped up when adapting any historical event for the big screen or small screen, but Polo is an example where it's not actually for the purpose of a more gripping story. Instead it's the backdrop to melodrama.

It's well acted enough, for the most part, that it's watchable trashy TV. But for the budget being poured into it, I'd expect better than that.

[Ghosts Lunch]

There can be a problem when the budget is too high, eg showrunners and staff start to get a bit lazy and people start to rort it, whereas if they are feeling budgetary pressures this often leads to them having to be creative in how the adapt it which can transfer creatively into the show

If the budget was too high, we'd probably see too much CGI battles amongst other stuff like Star Wars prequel and Hobbit prequel trilogies. An issue with practical effects vs CGI is that CGI helps to realise a large vision but it lacks spirit so audiences can't and don't engage. No accident that the best of all the LOTR films is probably the Fellowship because it is character focused and low key

Trick is to have practical effects at its core with CGI on the edges (I reckon Prometheus did this quite well, Ridley Scott developed as a kind of camera oriented person), and by and large GoT has done that real well, eg there is so much depth etc that goes into the costumes etc and take the Battle for the Wall, I loved some of the camera shots employed in that episode, the battle may not have had the scale in the books but it creatively made up for it all in other ways.

Sometimes less is more, eg I enjoy the Dragons, the Giants and Direwolves when they make a rare appearance, this works well in that it keeps the show focused on the drama and on the acting as well which is what gets people engaged

Can go the other way, if they try and be stingy and go too low, or even decrease it ala Walking Dead season 2 we end up with Herschels Farm and terrible filler for most of the 13 episodes (shudder)

[Ghosts Lunch]

Also, budget may be going up but so is the actors wages, so the amount they have to actually spend on the show isn't necassarily increasing all that much

[melx]

MP does not appeal to me

but GOT was "saved" by Croatia locations: all they have to do is mask few windows/doors,take down some neons/billboards/etc, put some CGI high towers in background and they perfect stage without having to built one from sketch in studio ....

"production value" of GOT looks so high because most of the settings are real (not just Croatia but north Africa,Ireland,Iceland and soon Spain(very exiting to see Dorne) )

[boojam]

The first season had a budget of $90 million for 10 episodes.

If the poor netflix can make a medieval tv show with this kind of budget, why HBO with almost 10x bigger profit than netflix can't do the same with a series that is the most watched and profitable in history of HBO? I mean, for the first 4 seasons they had $60 million dollars budget for 10 episodes. Unlike netflix they wouldn't have risked anything because they already knew that the series was a succes . Yet they didn't increased its budget for the last seasons.

That's wrong, HBO has increased the budget season 3 and 4, we don't quite know by how much, it started at 60 million a year and may be as high as 90 million now.

Remember they have filmed they have filmed only where they have gotten a tax break to even an incentive , so could probably add 10 million to each season.

Note: HBO's 10 episode series THE PACIFIC was shot for 200 million dollars bigger than all but a few big budget films.

I am really sick of off screen battles and many other things they left out because of the budget. I wonder what will they do in the next seasons when the actors will start to ask for more money and the Dragons, White Walkers and the big armies will be everywhere.

Except for season 1, I can't think of a battle from the books that was skipped on the show.

In the books:

The sacking of Astapor

The battle of Yunkai

The battle of Meereen

all pretty much take place as told in retrospect, not on the page.

Have to admit the sacking of Astapor could have been elaborated a little more but no screen time was available.

In the books Yunkai and Meereen were full fledged battles however they were not 'on page' GRRM told them as stories.

But then I don't want a lot of been-there-done-that battle sequences, the thing that ruins the recent run of COMIC BOOK MOVIES , a ton of almost the exact same action over and over again, I have gotten so tired of it I don't go anymore.

Endless elaboration of the obvious.

Having producers and writers execute an good story is a hard thing to do and that's what GOT does.

Sometimes even that fails , I could have watched 8 more seasons of ROME if it had of succeeded.

I think the studio's who produce such work as The White Queen, Marco Polo, or Camelot produced loosers because they did not have an imaginative vision or story , Camelot was just god-awful cast and production wise, ... except for Eva Green!

[Ghosts Lunch]

MP does not appeal to me

but GOT was "saved" by Croatia locations: all they have to do is mask few windows/doors,take down some neons/billboards/etc, put some CGI high towers in background and they perfect stage without having to built one from sketch in studio ....

"production value" of GOT looks so high because most of the settings are real (not just Croatia but north Africa,Ireland,Iceland and soon Spain(very exiting to see Dorne) )

Yeah I loved the setting for the Viper vs the Mountain, overlooking the Sea etc

Only thing missing was that spectator getting decapitated, but the locations have had the perfect feel to it, probably because they are authentic

Looking forward to seeing Spain as Dorne,

[Ghosts Lunch]

That's wrong, HBO has increased the budget season 3 and 4, we don't quite know by how much, it started at 60 million a year and may be as high as 90 million now.

Remember they have filmed they have filmed only where they have gotten a tax break to even an incentive , so could probably add 10 million to each season.

Note: HBO's 10 episode series THE PACIFIC was shot for 200 million dollars bigger than all but a few big budget films.

Except for season 1, I can't think of a battle from the books that was skipped on the show.

In the books:

The sacking of Astapor

The battle of Yunkai

The battle of Meereen

all pretty much take place as told in retrospect, not on the page.

Have to admit the sacking of Astapor could have been elaborated a little more but no screen time was available.

In the books Yunkai and Meereen were full fledged battles however they were not 'on page' GRRM told them as stories.

But then I don't want a lot of been-there-done-that battle sequences, the thing that ruins the recent run of COMIC BOOK MOVIES , a ton of almost the exact same action over and over again, I have gotten so tired of it I don't go anymore.

Endless elaboration of the obvious.

Having producers and writers execute an good story is a hard thing to do and that's what GOT does.

Sometimes even that fails , I could have watched 8 more seasons of ROME if it had of succeeded.

I think the studio's who produce such work as The White Queen, Marco Polo, or Camelot produced loosers because they did not have an imaginative vision or story , Camelot was just god-awful cast and production wise, ... except for Eva Green!

Yeah we only see a specific part of it and there is a sense of chaos/fog of war as to what is happening outside/elsewhere, eg the Jorah/Tyrion/BBP in the Yunkish tent, Ser Barristan and the arrival of Victarions IB fleet as an X factor

This works well because if every tactic/strategy was mentioned it would get tiresome

I think the Battle of Blackwater and the wall are different but that is fine, because it goes into the story of the leadership abilities of Tyrion and Jon respectively which ties in with their chracter development. Even then not everything is known, eg Tywin comes out of nowhere and there is no sense as to what has happened with Donal Noye in the tunnel

I loved Rome, they could have done more with battles there, but they did make an effort in s2 with Brutus battle plus they also made an effort to explain what happened tactically in other scenes

[yxalitis]

Care Factor?

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[silvertone1484]

I read an article on Grantland where the author was pretty confident season four of GOT cost more than this season of Marco Polo. He stated it as if this was a known fact. Not sure the exact article but it was about Marco Polo not GOT.