The first half of Season 1 of the American musical drama TV series “The Get Down,” featuring six episodes, has already streamed on Netflix in August. The second half, composed of six episodes, has been reported to be streamed on the streaming giant next year yet.
Thus, it comes as a surprise to many critics when online news sites have been reporting about Season 2 of “The Get Down.” Many of these sites appear to be not aware that “The Get Down” Season 1 had a 12-episode order and only the first six episodes of the TV series has been streamed on Netflix last August.
Some reports are also saying that “The Get Down” has already been canceled for Season 2 by Netflix, which is also producing the TV series.
There are also talks about the second season of “The Get Down” being in jeopardy because of the huge cost of producing the show. But Netflix, later on, stated that it is paying big money for the TV series but it does not intend to cancel it for its sophomore season.
An expensive piece of TV
During Netflix’s quarterly earnings call on November 7, company chief content officer Ted Sarandos confirmed that “The Get Down” is indeed an expensive piece of television.
He explained however that it is primarily because the TV series is very large scale and cinematic. He also revealed that their new season of content, including “The Get Down” was traveling globally as they really had projected.
Sarandos admits that “The Get Down” may be an issue of expense versus viewership to some but they have found the show to be attractive on a global scale.
He explained that Netflix is still seeing how the show is going to unfold for the remainder of its first season.
The chief content officer of Netflix added that they are very excited about how the show has been performing, particularly in a quarter where they had four shows that turned out to be kind of big event programs for Netflix.
$16 million per episode
Even before Netflix decided to dip its hands into producing “The Get Down,” the streaming service knew that it would be an expensive proposition.
The series from Academy Award-winning husband-and-wife team of Baz Luhrmann and Catherine Martin, Pulitzer-winning playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis, hip-hop historian Nelson George, and iconic rappers MC Nas and Grandmaster Flash was expected to cost around $11 million per episode for 12 episodes, which all-in would have totaled about $120M.
But as it turned out, Netflix is paying more like $16M per episode because inclusive in the total is worldwide rights to the IP, and factored into that are the premiums that Netflix paid to acquire those rights exclusively.
Other costs include start-up, visual effects, music rights and production design. Of the $16 million, around $11 million was the final production expenses per episode, $3 million-$4 million over the initial budget following a string of filming shutdowns, staffing changes, and script rewrites.
In the small screen, when a TV drama is produced for $6M or higher an episode, it is considered expensive.
So adding in all the costs on “The Get Down,” including the worldwide rights and premiums, that brings the total for the 12-episode Season 1 closer to the $190M-plus range.
Despite rumors of cancellation for “The Get Down,” the TV series is currently in production for Season 1B and perhaps for Season 2 as well, which was already confirmed by Baz Luhrmann, reports Game & Guide.
There are also reports saying that Season 1B or Season 2 of “The Get Down” shall have a time jump to the 80s during the time of pop icons like Michael Jackson and Prince, notes the Parent Herald.
While there are reports saying that Season 2 of “The Get Down” would air in the spring of next year, it is least likely to happen since Season 1B had to air first in order for Season 2 to get its crack in airing or streaming.