How HBO Kept ‘House of the Dragon’ Costs Under $20 Million per Episode (EXCLUSIVE)

Christopher Vourlias “Million Dollar Pigeons,” which had its world premiere this week at Hot Docs, follows a colorful cast of pigeon masters from far and wide who compete in the most lucrative pigeon races on the planet. Variety has been given exclusive access to the trailer, and speaks to the director, Irish filmmaker Gavin Fitzgerald.The third documentary feature from Fitzgerald, the film enters the world of the passionate “pigeon fanciers” who put their reputations and livelihoods at stake in pursuit of ever-growing prize purses.

Clayton Davis British star Daisy Edgar-Jones is showcasing a stellar year across television and movies. Best known for her breakout turn as Marianne Sheridan in Hulu’s “Normal People” (2020), the 23-year-old sensation has two potential Emmy vehicles.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterNetflix has ordered a docuseries from Shawn Levy, Vox Media Studios and The Verge about how technology will affect the basic aspects of our lives in the future, Variety has learned exclusively.Titled “The Future Of…,” the show asks: “What if we could look into the future to see how every aspect of our daily lives — from raising pets and house plants to what we eat and how we date — will be impacted by technology?” Per Netflix, “We can, and should, expect more from the future than the dystopia promised in current science fiction. ‘The Future Of…’ will reveal surprising and personal predictions about the rest of our lives — and the lives of generations to come.”The series will be released globally in two batches, with the first six episodes premiering Tuesday, June 21, and the remaining six episodes on Tuesday, June 28.

The BBC's Freeze the Fear with Wim Hof sees a group of celebrities push themselves to the limit as they take on shivering temperatures. In the latest episode tonight (May 3), the celebs take on their most daunting and coldest challenge so far, in the form of the forbidding Ice Ladder.

took its final bow on Friday, as the last episodes of the series debuted on Netflix. And, true to form, the crime drama left fans biting their nails until the final moment as the Byrde family banded together to protect their own. While the final episode was a bloodbath for many of the Byrdes' allies and enemies -- including Ruth Langmore (Julia Garner) and Omar Navarro (Felix Solis) -- it was the white collar family-turned-crime overlords who were left standing at the end.In the final moments, Marty (Jason Bateman) and Wendy (Laura Linney) faced one final threat in Mel Sattem (Adam Rothenberg), the private investigator who threatened to expose the couple for killing Wendy's brother, Ben (Tom Pelphrey).

Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker are taking over Italy!

If you watched the first season of the Emmy-winning and critically-acclaimed HBO Max comedy series “Hacks”—and you probably should if you didn’t, it’s a great conflict between two generations of comedians—you probably remember that things ended on a cliffhanger. The dark mentorship between legendary Las Vegas comedian Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and her young, entitled writer Ava (Hannah Einbinder) is still very much touch and go.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterIn the wake of big spender Netflix’s Q1 shocking subscriber loss news, David Zaslav made a point to say Warner Bros. Discovery “will not overspend to drive subscriber growth” during Discovery’s first-quarter earnings call Tuesday.“As you’ve heard me say, we are not trying to win the direct-to-consumer spending war,” the WBD CEO said, instead promising that the newly combined WarnerMedia-Discovery company would “invest in scale smartly.”Warner Bros.

Last week, we learned that Netflix was spending $30 million per episode on the fourth season of “Stranger Things,” which is double the costs of the final season of HBO‘s “Game of Thrones” at $15 million per and a huge jump from the $6 million price tag on the first season episodes of “Stranger Things.” That’s not the only high-priced streaming series on the way.

The new HBO series House of the Dragon is coming soon and it’s obviously going to cost a lot, though the price tag isn’t as high as some people might think.

Streaming giant Netflix made massive headlines this week when the company revealed in a quarterly earnings report that they lost 200,000 subscribers and their stock subsequently plummeted (apparently the company lost 700,000 subscribers when they cut off service to Russia, but obviously made up some of that number in new subscribers). Additionally, after indicating last month they weren’t going to change their model, in the wake of this stock crash, the streaming service announced they’ll be introducing a lower-cost subscriber option that will be ad-supported.

The next season of Stranger Things is premiering with a multi-million dollar bang.

Netflix and Skydance Television have set the cast of the untitled Arnold Schwarzenegger spy adventure series, signing nine actors as series regulars to join Schwarzenegger in his first TV series role, and previously announced female lead Monica Barbaro. The list includes Travis Van Winkle (You), Gabriel Luna, reuniting with Schwarzenegger after starring together in Terminator: Dark Fate, Fortune Feimster (The Mindy Project), Jay Baruchel (This Is the End), Milan Carter (Warped!), Fabiana Udenio (Jane the Virgin), Barbara Eve Harris (Station 19), Aparna Brielle (A.P. Bio) and Andy Buckley (The Office).

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterNetflix reported its first-quarter 2022 earnings Tuesday, revealing how the company did in terms of subscriber signups and financial growth in the three-month period that included the debuts of “Bridgerton” Season 2 and “The Adam Project.”The streaming service lost 200,000 subscribers in Q1 and said it expects to lose another 2 million in the current second quarter. In January, Netflix reported it had 221.84 million subscribers at the end of 2021. The new total is 221.64 million subs.Netflix previously forecast 2.5 million paid net adds in Q1 while Wall Street analysts expected Netflix to add 2.8 million new subscribers worldwide in the first quarter vs.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterHBO’s “Winning Time” has landed a series high for the third week in a row, drawing 1.4 million viewers across HBO and HBO Max on Sunday.Per HBO, Episode 7 of the Los Angeles Lakers drama was up up 11% vs. last week’s episode and 59% above the season premiere.

A nearly three-hour Batman film, bordering on R-Rated, certainly not for kids, that’s nihilistic, darker than the Christopher Nolan films, and not really much of a traditional superhero movie released during a pandemic seemed like a risky endeavor for Warner Bros. earlier this year (read our review here).

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are living life in the slow lane, but it's OK because a couple of kiddos were behind the wheel!The Duke and Duchess of Sussex enjoyed quite the ride Saturday in The Hague, Netherlands where they attended the first event at the 2022 Invictus Games. The royal couple was there to kickoff the Jaguar Land Rover Driving Challenge, which pits 500 competitors from 20 countries in a specially designed course built at Zuiderpark.