A Game of Screens
HBO, put Game of Thrones in theaters. Take our money!
Warning: mild spoilers below, not in the content, just the images!This weekend, alongside 17.4 million or so of you, I watched the season premiere of Game of Thrones. The eighth season. The final season.¹ Unsurprisingly, it’s crushing viewing records. Which got me thinking…
In the lead up to the season, there was a report that the producers had originally conceived of this last hurrah as three movies. Granted, they were thinking about this years ago, trying to extrapolate out how they could possibly end a show of such scope — and such cost. In the end, given the building popularity in the intervening years, HBO didn’t hesitate to step up to the plate to give them what they needed in order to keep it on television.
Still, one wonders what might have been…
Those same reports suggest the budget for each episode this year is roughly $15M. This is obviously unprecedented for television. But for film, and certainly a production with the scope of Thrones, this is rather modest. Six episodes at $15M per is $90M. Let’s round up to $100M. For a whole season of Game of Thrones — somewhere between six to nine hours of content (the episodes will get longer as the season progresses). For comparison, the latest How to Train Your Dragon movie — a fitting comparison, no? — had a reported budget of $129M. That movie is 1 hour and 44 minutes long. Did I mention it’s animated?
Another, more live-action, blockbuster comparison: the forthcoming Avengers: Endgame movie is said to have a budget approaching $500M. Yes, five hundred million dollars. But yes, that includes marketing, so let’s say it actually cost $300M to $400M. It’s around 3 hours long.
In other words, a single movie with one-third the footage has a budget that is at least three to four times of our television show in question. Yes, they’re two different beasts. But imagine if they had made the Game of Thrones movies. Is there any question that someone — even if HBO was only a part of the equation — gives them a $500M to $1B budget to shoot all three, Lord of the Rings-style? No, there is no question. That’s 5x to 10x the resources.
Anyway, none of this is meant to demean the actual product we’re getting. As expected, the first episode was great. I’m sure the other five will be as well. But it’s still rather incredible what the team has done with such a budget, even if it’s the largest in television. And one can’t help but wonder “what if”…
But there’s an even more obvious, if tangential thought experiment here, one that has been percolating for months: what if HBO had just opted to open this latest season of Game of Thrones — the TV show, as is — in movie theaters?
Imagine if they ran the first episode in theaters only for the first week. Or even just opened it on a Thursday for the weekend before the Sunday premiere on HBO itself. I know I would absolutely go to see it on the big screen. As would many, many others, undoubtedly. Given the near feature-length of the episodes, I would even be fine paying full price for a movie ticket. But even if HBO “only” charged $5-$10 a ticket, how much money would they make? Tens of millions of dollars for sure. Hundreds of millions? Perhaps!
Just imagine if HBO had opted to open each of the six episodes of this season in this regard. We’re definitely talking hundreds of millions of dollars at that point. Then the question becomes: are we talking billions? Maybe not. Still, that is a lot of money for HBO to leave on the table, all for not doing much beyond some additional marketing and logistics.
The hype around Game of Thrones each week is crazy. I believe it could have crossed the chasm into theaters — again, theaters that people would pay to go to — with ease. Maybe HBO subscribers get a discount. Maybe those that sign up for the service at such an event get in free. There are all sorts of things HBO could have played with here.
And thinking outside of the television box would have been the savvy move. I won’t make the “winter is coming” joke here but well… Disney and Apple are coming! And Netflix is here! And HBO’s leader just paid the iron price. The war for peoples’ attention and time has just begun. And HBO has perhaps the ultimate weapon — which they’re using as a sword in a gun fight.²
Game of Thrones in theaters could have once again changed the landscape for content in our constantly-evolving world. Both for television and for theaters. It could have pointed to the type of marquee event to which content could aspire as the lines continue to blur between movies and television.³ Alas…
¹ Here’s where I’ll point to the my very spoiler-filled thoughts on how I felt like last season should have ended.
² Speaking of gun fights, there is an HBO show getting the movie treatment this year. But again, not in theaters!
³ Obviously the televison-to-movie bridge is nothing new —that is, TV shows which are successful enough get film treatments as well — and it continues to this day! I just have to believe there are other, more interesting ways to bridge these worlds in our current landscape. And again, Game of Thrones perhaps has a unique opportunity to do this, given its cinematic nature.
Note: this post was adapted from my newsletter published yesterday. Those interested can sign up here. Tangential ideas below...
