As the era of Peak TV continues with no end in sight, the biggest small screen exclusives will continue to get more expensive, especially now that some of the most popular and recognizable franchises in history are set to dive headfirst into episodic television. Amazon have already committed a billion dollars to five seasons of The Lord of the Rings, while the roster of shows hailing from Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe are rumored to cost anywhere between $15 million and $25 million per episode.
That doesn’t mean that the TV series with the biggest budgets are always going to be effects-heavy and action-orientated projects based on major brands, though, because even with Stranger Things, The Umbrella Academy and The Witcher in their arsenal, the costliest show on Netflix is period drama The Crown, which sets the streaming service back $13 million per episode.
As the most high profile series on Disney Plus, you’d imagine that the Star Wars and MCU stories would also be the most expensive, but insider Daniel Richtman is now claiming that the in-development Percy Jackson could be bestowed with that particular honor. We don’t know much about the latest adaptation of Rick Riordan’s novels other than the fact that the author is on board this time around, having been shut out when the big screen franchise was active, but Richtman says that the show will have a larger budget than what’s been given to the Marvel and Star Wars projects.
Riordan and wife Becky only revealed last month that the pilot script had been submitted for approval to the Disney hierarchy, and at this stage, Percy Jackson doesn’t have a release date, a schedule for the start of production or even any talent involved on either side of the camera. With so few of the pieces in place and the pilot not even being given the green light as of yet, the budget is more than likely still a long way away from being officially confirmed, but it certainly sounds like the Mouse House plans to invest a lot of money into the series.
