There are some things in Hollywood that make me scratch my head, and the ballooning budgets of TV series that simply do not seem like they should cost that much is chief among them. We’ve gone through this with Marvel’s $200+ million Secret Invasion, and now, reportedly, season 2 of Severance is going to cost $20 million an episode. If they mirror the nine episodes of season 1, that’s $180 million for season 2.
This detail comes from a Bloomberg story that says Apple TV+ is done spending essentially unlimited money on its TV shows when it has failed to perform compared to rivals in the space. The metric used is that they get less views in a month than Netflix does in a day, according to estimates. It accounts for just 0.2% of TV viewing in the US.
Apple has thrown serious money at heavy hitters like Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, and they spent reportedly $250 million on Masters of the Air. The service is also known for extremely high-quality science fiction offerings, where in addition to Severance they have Foundation, Silo and For All Mankind, where all have been renewed and continue producing pricey seasons. If shows like these are on the chopping block that would serious degrade the quality of the service, but we have no specifics about what may change from here. There’s also the option to keep these shows but dramatically slash their budgets, which I fear would lead to a “Altered Carbon season 2” situation (if you know, you know).
I keep trying to wrap my head around why Severance could possibly cost $20 million an episode, where 90% of season 1 took place in either Mark’s house or Mark’s extremely empty surreal office when he was severed. We have only gotten glimpses of season 2, but what on earth could be happening in a show like this to warrant that kind of price?
Apple TV+ remains one of the most frustrating streaming services out there because it has so many great shows. Its battling average is far higher than any other service where it feels like 80% of its content is worth watching as opposed to 10% of what Netflix throws at the wall in any given month.
But Apple has simply not been able to grow the service how it needs to be. Some blame poor marketing, others blame poor availability as the service is not available on many devices, including Android, and there are other ideas that it should have provided a lot more free trials to Apple customers, of which there are obviously hundreds of millions around the globe.
It’s not like Apple TV+ is shutting down, but the days of infinite spending appears to be over. I very much hope this does not affect its incredible sci-fi series, but we simply don’t know how this will play out yet.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
