Since the release of The Three-Body Problem, many of us have been wondering about its renewal on Netflix. Although it has had good enough numbers for its second season to be confirmed, it has not been the biggest success of the streaming platform, and everything seemed to indicate that Netflix wanted it to be that way.
With the creators of Game of Thrones as showrunners, the series adapts one of the biggest science fiction best sellers of the 21st century. The mix of physics problems and interstellar action make it one of the most ambitious science fiction series in history, but has it been as expensive as one would expect?
Yes and no. Although it falls far short of the budget of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and Citadel, the two most expensive series on Amazon Prime Video, each episode of The Three-Body Problem has cost a whopping $20 million. This makes it the fourth most expensive series in Netflix history, and the second most expensive first season, only behind a historic failure like Jupiter’s Legacy.
But what are these series that have surpassed The Three-Body Problem and how did each of them do? Or in other words, will the fiction from the creators of Game of Thrones get renewed? Let’s follow the rest of the examples.
Jupiter’s Legacy: the big failure
The only first season that has cost more than The Three-Body Problem is Jupiter’s Legacy. The series based on Mark Millar’s comic book aimed to be Netflix‘s superhero reference, but it crashed with the audience as soon as it came out… and its cancellation was practically automatic.
The series cost 25 million dollars per episode, and its main problem were the special effects. Although the filming was not as expensive as in other series, there were major problems in post-production that ended up increasing its initial cost from 130 million dollars to the final 200 million dollars.
The Witcher: a slow-burning disaster
Another great investment that still surpasses that of The Three-Body Problem is The Witcher. The fantasy series starring Henry Cavill cost $22.2 million per episode in its second season. This is a higher figure than the first season, which we know did not reach $20 million, but we do not have data for the third season, which will probably exceed it.
The Witcher started as a logical bet by Netflix to have its own Game of Thrones, and in a way it succeeded at first. However, the lack of momentum that the series began to have and the disagreements with the lead actor, which ended with Cavill out of the show, ended up killing the series.
Stranger Things: the golden goose
But there is one series that is above all these figures and whose title justifies it by itself. Stranger Things, the most watched series on Netflix and the crown jewel of the platform, started with a fairly usual budget for a series of its characteristics, but in the last season it skyrocketed to 30 million dollars per episode; a total of 270 million.
In this case, as we say, the price is justified. It is a series that has grown with the platform and whose actors have already become stars on their own. Therefore, it is not surprising that it is the most expensive series on Netflix.
