Sunday night’s episode of HBO’s hit series, Game of Throne, was the most expensive to produce in all four seasons of the show.
Season four of Game of Throne delves into the action pact ending of George R.R. Martin’s third novel of the A Song of Ice and Fire series. Use of CGI, period costumes and battle sequences that cause the entire cast and crew to be moved to shoot locations like I Ireland, Iceland and Croatia has lead to an average Game of Thrones episode costing approximately $6 million to make.
According to PolicyMic, $6 million is two to three times the amount a network or cable show usually costs per episode. Comparatively, Breaking Bad costed about $3 million per episode.
Kit Harrington, who plays Jon Snow in Game of Thrones, told Access Hollywood that last nights episode, “The Watchers on the Wall,” in which he plays a major role, is the most expensive episode of the show thus far.
“I think it’s as big as Thrones has gone at the moment... a lot of that is due to the CGI,” Harrington said.
The episode is entirely focused on the Night’s Watch battle with the Wildlings. Harrington said of the episode that his character finally gets to prove himself to his commander, Alliser Thorne and everyone else who didn’t believe what he told them about the Wildlings, Wilding giants and life North of the Wall.
According to Harrington, in previous episodes leading up to this one, his character Jon Snow, continuously warns his brothers of The Wall at Castle Black, and Alliser Thorne, that the Wildling army was approaching. In episode nine, Jon’s premonitions are finally proven true.
“And so I hope it doesn’t disappoint, really, because it’s meant to have been leading up to this,” Harrington told Access Hollywood.
Like many of the actors and actresses that have had the pleasure to work on such a popular, grand-scale show, Harrington stated about his part in the show and episode nine in particular, “I feel hugely privileged.”
This episode, which is the ninth episode of season four, is the most large scale episode since season two’s episode “Battle of Blackwater Bay” that cost the show-runners $8 million to produce, PolicyMic stated.
The sequences for “Watchers on the Wall” were shot in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
“I wouldn’t say it’s wall-to-wall action—because it doesn’t start right away—but once it gets going about 15 minutes into the episode it doesn’t stop,” David Benioff, co-creator of the show, said of last night’s episode.
The show has a new production designer, Deborah Riley, who created a larger scale, top-of-The Wall set. According to Benioff, Riley’s creation is considerably larger than what the cast had to use before.
Benioff added, “You can do walk-and-talks, you can have action sequences. It’s completely surrounded by green screen, which apparently is the biggest green screen in Europe.”