Here's How Much 'House Of Cards' Cost To Produce
Back in 2013, Netflix launched a series called 'House of Cards.' While "political thriller" sounds more like a bad joke than an actual genre, fans were all over the series. It was a big deal for Netflix, too, because it was the streaming service's first in-house production.
Fans might suspect that the series was cheap, given that it was Netflix's first foray into creating its own shows. But that wasn't the case — although it eventually turned out that the cash it cost to produce was money well-spent.
Before Netflix launched the series, The Atlantic ran an article that broke down the show's budget — and defended it, too.
When it came to the bottom line on 'House of Cards' costs, Netflix paid out at least $100 million for two seasons of 13 episodes each. Pointing out that Netflix only runs off subscriber fees, and not ads or partnerships with big networks, The Atlantic echoed what fans were thinking: $100 million was pretty steep. Especially for 2013!
But fast forward almost a decade, and Netflix is doing amazingly well for itself. So clearly, that early investment in a top-shelf series paid off. And, as The Atlantic pointed out, breaking even didn't take much effort. With the amount of growth that Netflix was already experiencing back then (the publication clocked the subscription service at 33.3 million subscribers at the time), the numbers weren't that crazy.
In fact, Netflix was doing better at their income per subscriber than HBO at the time, when looking at HBO's charges as a fraction of consumers' cable bills. The $100M also seemed like a good investment — even for a first foray into self-produced shows — because Netflix was facing high fees for paying for rights to other companies' shows and films.
Remember, there was no Disney streaming service in 2013, and Netflix was paying them — and others — millions for streaming rights.
It really did pay off, too. Even though Kevin Spacey was involved in a scandal that resulted in his character — the lead — being killed off in the next-to-last season, 'House of Cards' ran for six seasons and earned plenty of fans.
And as of 2020, Netflix had over 195 million subscribers, according to Statista. Clearly, they broke even on 'House of Cards' and applied what they'd learned to new shows. Now, Netflix has countless "Original" shows and movies, with new content rolling out all the time.
Sure, Netflix still maintains relationships with several studios, but these days, $100M is nothing, whether that's the cost of producing a couple of seasons of a show or buying the rights to another company's already-successful show. That said, Netflix has a pretty ambitious lineup coming for 2021, and it's a star-studded list that's well worth the no doubt expensive bill they'll be getting!
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