Inflated company valuations and government budgets are not the only thing bogging us down in this economy; the problem has made its way through to the filmmaking industry as well, with production costs rising across genres and formats alarmingly.
The recently announced Harry Potter TV series for HBO is a reminder of the precedent studios give to bigger projects with popular fan bases, as they funnel money like there is no tomorrow. Some reports have speculated on very high per-episode budgets, though while figures remain unconfirmed, some describe it as around $100 million per episode. To put that into perspective, the original eight-film series had combined production budgets estimated at around $1 billion. Even after considering inflation and the franchise’s popularity, a single season would rival the combined cost of the eight films, and the films themselves raked in more than $7 billion at the global box office, a scale of theatrical revenue that streaming platforms cannot promise.
The global nature of content now calls for bigger budgets, and this trend now follows in the form of Amazon’s The Rings of Power, which is reported to have cost around half a billion dollars for its first season, making it one of the most expensive TV shows in history. In recent years, feature films have seen similar cost escalation. Reported and estimated budgets include Netflix’s The Electric State ($350 million), Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (nearly $400 million), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ($300 million), and several large Marvel-related projects, like Deadpool & Wolverine (approximately $500 million). These big budgets are often a hit or a miss.
Here in India, many films find it difficult to manage the growing scale and ambition. A lack of well-planned production and operations is a major challenge, evident in the cases of Brahmastra and Adipurush, both of which exceeded their original budgets and faced audience dissatisfaction and weaker-than-expected revenue. Budgets also run deep for highly anticipated projects. Controversy aside, in the case of Don 3, Excel Entertainment reportedly incurred losses of around ₹45 crore in pre-production alone.
A contributing factor is the growing share marketing and promotion occupy in the budget, a new requirement in an increasingly cluttered content landscape. Even indie and small-budget films have their own demons, the kind produced not for high viewership but for critical acclaim. For instance, Anora which won five Academy Awards in 2025, including Best Picture, had a production budget of $6 million but reportedly spent three times that amount on marketing, distribution, and awards campaigning.
At the center of this problem are studios and streaming platforms. The booming streaming industry initially had the power to bid aggressively for content and drive up prices based on the criteria it set, helping in setting new industry standards. Today, streamers have the resources to produce like studios and create original content, the value of which is harder to determine because traditional metrics like box office revenue do not apply in the same way.
As for studios, there persist unsustainable norms around blockbusters and how their grandeur is often linked to budgets allocated for locations, VFX, and talent. There is ongoing pressure to keep juicing franchises despite diminishing returns on sequels, like the Fast & Furious Franchise, which has reached narrative saturation but production scale and action sequences continue to grow.
The days of bottle episodes feel rarer, when we were consuming exceptionally written shows that spanned multiple seasons with hour-long episodes. Now we may wait a year for 8 to 12 episodes only to have forgotten the plot or to find that the studio has canceled the show. Much of this is because it is getting harder to create memorable content and more expensive to increase engagement.
Bigger budgets should translate to bigger responsibilities and higher standards of quality. The biggest asset we have as moviegoers and subscribers is to appreciate and pay for content that caters to deeper human conditions in contrast to the kind that only feeds off elaborate visuals.
