HBO is betting hundreds of millions of dollars that “The House of the Dragon“, the prequel series of “Game of Thrones“, which premiered two weeks ago, is a huge success. According to a report published by Deadline, HBO is spending $130 million on the marketing campaign of the new show, the biggest to date. And adds to the approx. $200 million spent on the program itself, roughly double the budget of the “Game of Thrones” seasons: Variety confirmed that each of the 10 episodes of “House of the Dragon” cost about $20 million.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is betting the series will be “the next big cultural milestone.” The plot takes place about 200 years before the story told in “Game of Thrones”, and traces the civil war that destroys the targaryen dynasty. Matt Smith, Emma D’Arcy, Paddy Considine, Olivia Cooke and Milly Alcock lead an extensive cast, which will include 17 computer generated dragons.
Investment
“Game of Thrones” lasted eight seasons, won 59 Emmy Awards and was the most popular show on HBO, and possibly the most popular on television of the decade, with 44 million viewers on all platforms in its final season. No one expects those kinds of numbers for.”The House of the Dragon“, at least still. But the series does push the HBO mystique again.
The end of “Game of Thrones” disappointed a good part of the fans, but “The House of the Dragon” seems to be generating a new enthusiasm. HBO has a lot at stake: it is planning seven additional series set in Westeros (the “Middle Earth” devised by George R.R. Martin), four live action and three animated: an effort to create something similar to the Marvel Cinematic Universe but around the medieval epic. “The House of the Dragon” will be the first test of that strategy, but it collides with cost reduction in 3 billion dollars that the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery Inc. and AT&T’s T would impose.
The media giant has already cut the “Batgirl” movie (which cost $90 million and was nearly completed), the CNN show “Reliable Sources” and a dozen HBO Max shows in an effort to save money. And Warner Bros. also announced that it was cutting its workforce by 14%. The long-term plan outlines a handful of expensive HBO-produced flagships, and a flotilla of cheaper options, Discovery+-branded reality shows.
stories
When HBO released “Game of ThronesIn 2011, who would have bet that so many viewers would flock to a show based on an unfinished series of epic fantasy novels inspired by the English Wars of the Roses?
But the palatial plots reaped 164 Emmy nominations. So much so that HBO tried to replicate the magic with the showrunners, David Benioff and DB Weiss, who thought of a prequel with Naomi Watts (“King Kong”): They spent $30 million on a pilot, but the series “felt too adult, with themes centered around colonialism and religious extremism,” HBO executive Francesca Orsi told the Hollywood Reporter.
The project that had the tone of “The Wire” and “The Sopranos”, was discarded. And the plot was rethought for a more direct bet. “There is no need to subvert expectations”, supported David Zaslav who has the mission that “The House of the Dragon” is a new source of constant income. “Game of Thrones” made profits of 285 million dollars per episode for eight seasons, and wants to scale it to compete with franchises like the Marvel Cinematic Universewhich has grossed $38 billion, or “Star Wars,” which has amassed more than $69 billion over four decades.
But “the house of the dragon” has no heroes: there is no equivalent to the Stark family of “Game of Thrones” with which to identify. And this may give it a historical realism that will appeal to critics, but it will almost certainly make it less accessible to a wider audience. Something that “The Rings of Power”, the Amazon Prime series, has better resolved: Sauron is a consecrated villain, and the elf Galadriel a character already known to fans of “The Lord of the Rings”.
by RN
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