Never said it was low budget......but based on what they wanted to do the budget was low. ROME as an example had a bigger budget at over 100 Million at the start and flopped.
It seemed a lot like what you said >
"The series is relatively low/limited budget and they a lot with what they get."
They film in Ireland, Malta, Croatia, etc to keep costs down and it
still cost that much. Some of those places they pay crew 1/10th what they do in the US. Filming offshore can reduce production costs by over 50% in some cases.
Lost was clocking in at over $14 mil per episode with 22 episode long seasons - $200+ mil per season!
It cost $14m for the
pilot episode and then $4m per episode thereafter. That's less than GOT and included having to pay a stack of high paid actors (compared to GOT at least - Matthew Fox, Terry O'Quinn, Jorge Garcia etc in later seasons were on big $$)
Friends final season cost over 180million USD
Seinfeld was close to 100million
You talked about GOT in terms of keeping production costs down by not filming battles/outdoors etc and then cite a stack of shows, some of which cost tons
purely because of the truly massive acting fees - Friends and Seinfeld especially. Which is it?
Comparing it to Two and Half Men... though - less than half the episodes of any 2.5 Men season (other than the one where Sheen went awol) and no big actors to pay $1m an episode. It's not really a like for like comparison there.
