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how much money..
- Thread starter travell3r
- Start date
PillowRock
Regular
The reference point that I know off the top of my head (or at least the figure that was widely bandied about on the net) was that production cost for Farscape, averaged across a 22 episode season (since some eps cost more than others to produce due to things like varying amounts SFX etc.), was approximately $1.5 million per 1 hour (less commercials) episode.
Using that as a benchmark, 20 hours of broadcast time (less commercials) would cost about $30 million to produce.
I'm not sure what the overall effect on costs would be due to differences such as having vs. not having animatronic characters, many of Farscape's alien races appearing to need more time consuming makeup, the fact that Farscape was produced in Australia, .....
Of course, the budget for Legend of the Rangers would probably be a more direct "comparable" (at least assuming the mini-series would be produced in Canada), but I don't remember their budget off-hand.
Using that as a benchmark, 20 hours of broadcast time (less commercials) would cost about $30 million to produce.
I'm not sure what the overall effect on costs would be due to differences such as having vs. not having animatronic characters, many of Farscape's alien races appearing to need more time consuming makeup, the fact that Farscape was produced in Australia, .....
Of course, the budget for Legend of the Rangers would probably be a more direct "comparable" (at least assuming the mini-series would be produced in Canada), but I don't remember their budget off-hand.
Joseph DeMartino
Moderator
The TV movies produced for TNT cost something over $3 million, about 1 1/2 times the roughly $900,000 cost of an episode in 1999. IIRC Rangers cost more like $4 million - and it was shot in Canada, which saved considerable money. TV movie bugets are a better yardstick than episode budgets, because all of the Hollywood union contracts treat TVMs and minis differently than series episodes. (Meaning that everybody's price goes up on a TVM. 
)
To be on the safe side, figure $100 million to produce 20 hours of material. $2.5 million an hour to allow for inflation and the unexpected.
BTW: How do you plan to talk Warner Bros. into selling you the rights, and forcing some TV network or cable channel to carry the mini?
Regards,
Joe
)To be on the safe side, figure $100 million to produce 20 hours of material. $2.5 million an hour to allow for inflation and the unexpected.
BTW: How do you plan to talk Warner Bros. into selling you the rights, and forcing some TV network or cable channel to carry the mini?
Regards,
Joe
Mindwalker
Regular
he will tie them to the chair and force them to watch episodes of Grand Ole Opry!!!
Jade Jaguar
Regular
Or make it a webcast on B5TV. That would liven things here up a bit.
