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elmis

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Some more information, possibly, about the budget. The Minister of Culture for N. Ireland posted this blog post where he states the budget for each series of the show (in US English that means a "season" of the show) will be about £30 million, which translates to about $45 million.

IIRC, The Tudors had a budget of around $40 million, as well, just for comparison sake, and Rome was around $100 million (though, they overpaid for that). We know a lot is being saved on the show for the facilities and by using existing locations or re-purposing sets from other productions (notably the Kingdom of Heaven set in Morocco).

I'm curious if later seasons will actually cost more. It stands to reason they will have to if longer and some of the really huge scenes, but the Culture Minister might be describing a low-ball figure for future seasons so as not to over-promise for the future.

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Deadwood was at about $60 million a season; but they did build a rather extensive set, as I recall (then again, Boardwalk Empire has a massive set built -- I wonder what their budget is...)

As I recall, among the things touted for productions based in NI were significant tax breaks, supporting funds, and then the breaks on the production facilities. All in all, this seems like a pretty reasonable budget, and it should basically be about on par with Deadwoodas far as purchasing power goes.

And I agree, I think that budget is for 10 episodes ... but if it's a hit, and they order more seasons, with more episodes, you'd think the budget would rise.

ETA: And since I tweeted this, I''ll share here: discussion of the whys and wherefors of how Martin Scorsese's Boardwalk Empire hour-long pilot cost $50 million all on its lonesome.

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The Deadwood set was huge and incredibly detailed, and grew over the course of the series as the town grew during its gold rush boom. The $60 million in California Deadwood would have cost, with the union rates there and everything just generally more expensive, probably is indeed close to the $45 million this will cost in to shoot in N. Ireland.

Everyone seems to forget what a bargain it was for New Line to shoot LotR in New Zealand - it cost only a fraction of what it would have cost to shoot in America. It's a little hard to know for sure what the final budget of that was: when it first went into production they were saying they could do the entire trilogy for $300 NZ, which then translated to about $100 million US. Later, when the movies came out, they always touted the $300 million budget number for the series. I've never been sure if that was the already bargain cost in U.S. dollars or the incredible bargain cost in NZ dollars. Whatever the case, had it been shot in the U.S., it probably would have cost about $200 million US per film. At best they got the movies made for 1/2 of what it would have been in the U.S., maybe even just 1/6th.

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Woohoo! Yay, so happy. I'm actually sorta in shock, since I never really believed HBO would pick it up. Even though I know it won't be on for at least a year or so, I just ordered HBO to show my support.

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