Game of Thrones is, by far, HBO’s most popular show, and with great popularity comes great responsibility . It also means the fantasy-epic has a much higher budget than anything else on television. We already know season six, which premieres April 24, will feature Thrones‘ “biggest [action sequence yet],” with “hundreds of human soldiers on one side of a field” and “another army on the other side, and then there is a clash that is highly tactical, yet character-driven.” Now comes word just how much every episode costs.
Those dragons aren’t going to pay for themselves.
In an exclusive Game of Thrones feature in the April print edition of Entertainment Weekly, reporter James Hibberd mentions the latest bank-breaking budget for season six of the series: “The show easily costs north of $10 million per episode at this point.
That means this 10-episode season set the Iron Bank back at least $100 million, and likely much more, considering the aforementioned (expensive) battle. It’s a far cry from season two, when the show’s budget was reportedly $60-$70 million a season and co-creators Dan Weiss and David Benioff had to beg HBO for an extra $2.5 million, and they “got $2 million-something.”