This Period Drama TV Show Spent $7M Per Episode And Still Flopped
Sometimes you just have to accept the defeat before spending another $70M on season 2.
It's no secret that some studios are so confident in what they want to do that they are willing to spend millions upon millions of dollars on their projects only to have them fail miserably with the audience.
When we talk about the movie industry, a movie is considered a flop if it doesn't make back or double the budget it was made with at the box office.
No matter how good the critical reception may be, the general public still makes a decision with their wallets.
The television industry, however, with all the nuances of whether you are on a broadcast network or a streaming service, is a little different.
The audience doesn't really pay directly for the content they consume, so the ratings of a series along with its duration are critical to its success.
You have to be extremely proud and confident in your work to cast A-list celebrities and put a $7 million per episode budget into the show. And if it flops, it has to be a lesson.
That is the lesson that former Starz president and CEO Chris Albrecht had to learn the hard way with the Camelot series. As the first TV show he ordered in his new role, Albrecht had high hopes for its global success.
A period drama based on the Arthurian legends, with high production values and starring Jamie Campbell Bower and Eva Green, the show received poor reviews from critics and soon faced scheduling conflicts with its stars.
Despite the generally good reviews, it didn't seem worth the effort to resolve all the conflicts and invest even more money only to have the show delayed.
Camelot was not the success Albrecht had hoped for with his historical fantasy drama.
Besides, staying on the air would mean facing the inevitable comparison with another show in the same genre that debuted in 2011, Game of Thrones.
However good the production of Camelot was, it was never a good idea to compete against the show that had become so popular so quickly, and so Camelot was canceled by Starz after only one season of 10 episodes.
Was it worth it to spend $70M on something that flopped so badly? Well, it's hard to tell with only one season of Camelot here to judge.
If you're interested to check it out yourself, you can do so by buying the show on Amazon Instant Video, Google Play, and Vudu.
Source: TVLine, The Wall Street Journal