Owner Of Netflix Confirms The Grand Tour Actually Cost Way More Than We Thought

When The Grand Tour was announced to be coming to Amazon Instant Video, we knew the budget would increase when compared to the famously tight wallet of the BBC. There were initial reports of it being 10 times as much as the BBC budget, which was rumored to be about £10 million GBP per year. Now it seems it’s far greater than that.

Netflix was also bidding to obtain the talents of the three most famous automotive presenters of the modern age, but they came up a bit short. The Chief Executive of Netflix, Reed Hastings, told The Guardian that Netflix did in fact bid on The Grand Tour’s services, but they were outbid by a substantial amount. “We bid on Jeremy Clarkson’s show and they bid more,” said Hastings in the interview. “By the time they won it, we were like ‘Wow, that’s a lot of money.’”

Until now, we never really knew how much money it was. Ted Saradnos just blew our minds, though, and has gone on record saying that TGT cost upwards of a quarter billion dollars to produce. Wow.

With so many new Prime subscribers, Amazon are likely raking in money, but will it be enough to compensate the cost of the show? According to previous reports, the company spent upwards of £160 million on the series, equalling [sic] an average of £4.5 million per episode.

Netflixboss Ted Sarandos has weighed in on the situation, claiming that even more money was spent on the series than previously claimed.

“That’s an under-reported number,” Sarandos told The Telegraph. “It was about a quarter of a billion dollars.”

That’s almost an addition £100 million spent on The Grand Tour than previously claimed.

When asked if he regreted if they didn’t get TGT for Netflix, Sarandos responded as any good executive missing on a great opportunity would.

“We knew what it was worth. We made a play for that show, definitely, but we’ve had every season of Top Gear on Netflix in most territories in the world, so we had a better sense than most of what the audience was for Top Gear on our platform.”

Sounds like Sarandos is deflecting here and that he’s sort of sore that he missed out. Sure he’s saying that he knew what the audience was for Top Gear when Clarkson, Hammond, and May were there, but since the TG firing and fallout the internet has made these guys into cult heroes even more than they were before.

Either way, TGT’s budget should make this a far greater show than TG was when they were at the helm. If the first episode is any indication, it’s going to be epic.

(Source: The Independent)