Hit Netflix Show Cost Just $26 Million To Make

Netflix has revealed that it only spent $26.2 million (£21.7 million) on making a spy thriller with a twist which the master of suspense, Stephen King, described as a “jaw dropper.”

Most Hollywood studios don’t seem to understand the old adage that less is more. Even the faintest hint that a show will be a hit usually spurs studios to give the green light to a sequel, and sometimes even a string of them, before it even makes it to the opening night. Netflix is one of the few exceptions.

In December 2022 the streamer lifted the curtain on Treason, a five-part show starring two Marvel actors – Daredevil’s Charlie Cox and Black Widow antagonist Olga Kurylenko. It was a tense and twisting tale of blackmail and double-dealing at the heart of MI6, the secretive British equivalent of the CIA. Despite having all the hallmarks of a blockbuster that could run and run, Netflix billed it from the start as being a ‘limited series’ and it has stuck to its guns.

The show has so many twists and turns that it’s tough to succinctly summarize all of them. In short, Cox has the role of Adam Lawrence, an up-and-coming intelligence officer who becomes the head of MI6 after his former lover, a Russian spy played by Kurylenko, poisons his boss.

Unbeknownst to Lawrence, she has done this in order to maneuver him into the top job so that he can tell her the name of the British double agent who murdered her team. Although he initially refuses, he is forced to go along with her when his boss recovers and accuses him of being the double agent.

The claim is designed to discredit Lawrence because he had begun to find out that his boss was involved with a plot to install a puppet Prime Minister in the United Kingdom. With his MI6 privileges revoked, Lawrence spends most of the show trying to clear his name of treason culminating in a surprising twist.

Its unpredictable plot and tone have been compared to 1959 Hitchcock classic North by Northwest and it hit the spot. Writing on social media, Stephen King described Treason as “fine entertainment which comes with a jaw-dropper in the last of 5 episodes. I didn’t see that coming.” There was good reason for this.

Treason was based on an original idea by Matt Charman, co-writer of the highly-acclaimed Steven Spielberg spy thriller Bridge of Spies. Although Treason wasn’t an audience favorite, with a score of just 39% on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, this didn’t stop it shooting straight to number one in the U.K. while it debuted in fourth place in the United States’ ranking of English-language shows with 56.1 million hours watched according to Netflix.

Critics could see the promise and rated it 72% on Rotten Tomatoes with The Hollywood Reporter eager for more. Its review said that “Treason is only five episodes long and each episode is under 46 minutes, making it one of those shows in which brevity is both its best and worst quality.” There’s no doubt that it kept the cost down.

Fittingly for a show about U.K. politics, Treason was filmed in and around London. Actual back streets, markets and country houses feature prominently on screen and shine a spotlight on the cost of the production.

The cost of streaming shows made in the U.S. is usually a closely-guarded secret as studios combine all of them in their overall expenses and don’t itemize how much was spent on each one. It’s a different story in the U.K. Studios filming there get a cash reimbursement of up to 25.5% of the money they spend in the country provided that it comes to at least 10% of the production’s core costs.

In order to demonstrate this to the authorities, studios usually set up separate companies to produce each show in the U.K. and they are obliged to file legally-binding financial statements. They show everything from the headcount and salaries to the total costs and the level of reimbursement.

The companies usually have code names so that they don’t raise attention with fans when filing for permits to film on location. Treason was made by Netflix subsidiary Remedy Pictures and, like all U.K. companies, its financial statements are released in stages long after the period they relate to. This starts during pre-production and continues after the premiere to give the production team time to ensure that all the bills are paid.

It explains why costs were still being booked on the 2024 Remedy Pictures financial statements even though the show debuted two years earlier. The filings were released just over a month ago and show that the cost of making Treason came to a total of $32.6 million (£27 million) with a $6.4 million (£5.3 million) reimbursement bringing the net spending on the series down to $26.2 million.

One of the biggest single expenses shown in the filings was the $3.8 million (£3.2 million) spent on staff with average monthly employee numbers coming to just 38 people. That’s without counting freelancers, contractors and temporary workers as they aren’t listed as employees on the books of U.K. companies even though they often represent the majority of the crew.

The latest data from the British Film Institute (BFI) shows that in 2019 film making generated 37,685 jobs in London and 7,775 throughout the rest of the U.K. The BFI’s triennial Screen Business report added that when the wider impacts of the film content value chain are taken into consideration, 49,845 jobs were created in London in 2019 and 19,085 throughout the rest of the U.K.

In February the BFI released its latest annual data which showed that foreign studios contributed a massive 87% of the $2.6 billion (£2.1 billion) spent on making films in the U.K. in 2024. Between 2020 and 2023 Netflix alone invested almost $6 billion in the U.K. shooting shows and films there. However, it remains to be seen how long the U.K. will continue to get a glow from attracting American studios away from their home country.

In May President Trump rocked Hollywood with the announcement that a 100% tariff will be applied to movies entering the United States that are produced in “foreign lands”. It was an attempt to bring film making back to the U.S. and although it has yet to be implemented, it hasn’t been forgotten.

Late last month Trump wrote on social media that “in order to solve this long time, never ending problem, I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States.” It nails his colors to the mast and if he doesn’t follow through with this threat to force studios back to the U.S., he will have to roll out the red carpet for them by coming up with blockbuster incentives to tempt them away from the U.K.