This Sunday, June 16, comes the premiere of one of the most anticipated television sagas: House of the Dragon. The series revolves around adventure, fantasy and epic, which is combined with realism and suspense. In addition, it is based on the book Fire and Blood by George RR Martin, which is set 200 years before the events of game of Thrones, flagship product of the MAX platform. The season will have 10 episodesand will continue to star Emma D’Arcy, Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, among others, in what will be the development of the war between the Targaryens.
In context: Finally! House of the Dragon filming of its second season begins
Bloomberg revealed that HBO announced the third season without yet releasing the second. The above may be due to the fact that “the series has set milestones in numbers and collections, as has been evident since its first season. House of the Dragon It had more than nine million viewers,” Alejandro Matallana, film scriptwriter and professor at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University, told La República.
And he added that it is not only the views, but also all the byproducts that practically turn it into an industry, with the whole issue of merchandising”. And it is that The 10 episodes of the first season cost US$200 million; Likewise, HBO spent approximately US$100 million to carry out the advertising campaign. marketing from the first season.
The above had the consequence that House of the Dragon became one of HBO’s largest marketing and advertising efforts to date. On the other hand, the production costs and the marketing campaign were not the only expenses that the franchise had, since, The pay of the cast in the first season was between US$100 and US$300 millions.
Read on: So it doesn’t get tangled! These are the children of Rhaenyra and Alicent in House of the Dragon
“HBO makes these investments because these types of series are important to them because seeks to replicate the success, at least partial, of game of Thrones, attracting a loyal audience with the offer of new stories from the same narrative universe,” said entertainment law lawyer, Ómar Javier Umaña.
However, for these new seasons, HBO does not have it easy, since, House of the Dragon has the challenge of maintaining quality and the attention of a very critical audiencewho also got used to the predecessor series that surprised them on many occasions, added Umaña.
This may be because the audience figures speak for themselves. game of Thrones It reached 9.3 million viewers in its first season at its premiere; and these numbers only grew consecutively until the premiere of the last one, which ended with an audience of 46 million people, points out the Dexerto.com portal. Its episode six of the last season, eight, was the most viewed in the entire history of the platform.
For its part, House of the Dragon It premiered with 9.9 million viewers, only in one episode, Well, Max already had an audience for that type of film. In the United States alone it achieved 29 million views, which represented a record for HBO. Likewise, it is estimated that the audience is 65 to 70 million globally. However, its most viewed episode, episode two, had 9.1 million fewer views than Game of Thrones.
You can also read: House of the Dragon It is not exact to Fire and Blood, how are the series and the book different?
“Definitely, all the franchise of game of Thrones has set the bar very high for the television industry in terms of story, performances and overall production. Undoubtedly, these mega productions force other channels or platforms to look for increasingly larger productions, as is the case with the series Harry Potter from Max,” Matallana mentioned.
Regarding the reason for the success of both, the screenwriter explains that they have unusual elements in their setting.
