Amazon Prime Video has been spending loads of money creating series that just simply aren’t panning out as hoped. Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy is taking a hard look at the numbers to see why multimillion-dollar shows aren’t resonating with audiences.
As reported by Bloomberg, last year alone Amazon Prime spent around $7 billion on original shows, licensed programs, and sports, a budgetary increase of $5 billion compared to 2022. Several series cost over $100 million to create but didn’t keep audiences entertained enough to stick out a season, including The Power, Dead Ringers, The Peripheral, and Daisy Jones & The Six. Even the Tolkien-inspired series The Rings of Power couldn’t maintain its audience, a series that cost Amazon over $400 million to produce, the most expensive Prime Video venture to date.
Prime Video may be struggling with several series, but the streaming service has also created some smash hits. Jack Ryan has brought in millions of viewers and released its fourth and final season on June 30th. Another fan favorite, The Boys, is expecting to debut its fourth season, though production has halted during the ongoing WGA writers’ strike. The fourth season is expected to come out early next year and has already been confirmed for a fifth season. Andy Jassy aims to find more projects like these to build up audience numbers and keep fans tuning in.
Andy Jassy plans to take a detailed look into Amazon Prime’s production expenses and get a clearer picture of why these programs cost so much to produce while failing to bring in and maintain substantial audience numbers. For example, Citadel was budgeted for $20 million per episode, but due to a number of changes and reshoots throughout production, an additional $80 million was added to the cost.
Taking a deep look into the process of how each show is created and where money is being spent when it could be better utilized is one of several reports Andy Jassy is going to be investigating. Amazon is still planning to increase its entertainment budget year to year and also plans to add more sports to the mix, so the matter is less about cutting costs but efficiently funneling money into projects that are driving up Amazon Prime memberships while also keeping audiences entertained.