9 Huge TV Industry Ramifications Of Ripper Street's Amazon Instant Video Resurrection

2. Bigger Budgets

Will collaborative funding schemes ultimately lead to an increased budget for resurrected or co-funded original shows? We€™re currently seeing a new cinematic approach to television - look at the big budget US shows from Boardwalk Empire to Game Of Thrones. The sizeable budgets of cable heavy weights necessitates budget increases - or enhanced creativity - from free to view channels if they are to compete in terms of both visuals and quality. This goes for original series from on-demand providers like Netflix and Amazon Instant Video too. It€™s widely reported Netflix invested $100 million in its 26 episode reboot of 1990s series House Of Cards. The result was a feature film style and the first Primetime Emmy nominations for an original online television show. Meanwhile Arrested Development was awarded a bigger budget €“ as Netflix outbid Showtime €“ that reached a reported $3 million per episode. Yet the success of Arrested Development€™s stars during the shows off-air years produced an unfortunate squeeze effect on the show. On the whole, it seems unlikely that resurrected shows will attract large budget increases. Given the role of falling ratings on show cancellation, it would be a pretty big punt to boost those series€™ original budgets further. If this were to happen, we might also question the impact of this budget increase on a show€™s focus and direction. In the case of Ripper Street it€™s already reported that budgets will remain at around the same level as pre-cancellation. Yet, if we were to see collaborations on entirely original series, this could be a different ball game altogether. Could we see such collaborative ventures match the big budget cable channels that have given us True Detective and Boardwalk Empire? It would be an exciting prospect if we did.