How much did Boardwalk Empire cost to make? Start with the Scorsese pilot that broke HBO's budget records
How much did Boardwalk Empire cost to make? Inside the $18 million Scorsese pilot, HBO's record TV budget, the $5 million Brooklyn boardwalk set, and per-episode costs.
Step one: hire Martin Scorsese. Step two: build the Jersey Shore in Brooklyn. Step three: stop looking at the invoices.
When Boardwalk Empire premiered in 2010, the number attached to it was almost as famous as Steve Buscemi's cheekbones: the pilot alone cost $18 million, which Broadcast reported made it the most expensive pilot in TV history at the time. And that was the conservative figure — The Hollywood Reporter noted that Page Six had floated a $50 million guess so alarming that HBO started steering everyone toward the Wall Street Journal's gentler $18 million estimate. When "eighteen million dollars" is your damage control, you've made television history.
Why so expensive? Glad you asked.
Creator Terence Winter saw it coming while he was still typing. As he told Variety:
"How can we possibly afford a boardwalk, or an empire?"
The answer: you build them. The production constructed a 300-foot boardwalk in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with a greenscreen horizon for a digital Atlantic Ocean, per THR — a set that reportedly cost $5 million by itself. Add period cars, period costumes, period everything, and a shooting schedule roughly triple a normal pilot's, and the meter runs itself.
And then there's the Scorsese tax, which HBO paid happily. Scorsese was only supposed to executive produce, but after reading the script he called Winter personally. Winter's recollection of that call, via MovieWeb:
"I think it's terrific. I think I'd like to direct it."
It was Scorsese's first scripted television in nearly 25 years, and the pilot won him a DGA Award. Money well set on fire.
The math after the pilot
- The remaining 11 episodes of season one were ordered at a rumored $65 million — call season one roughly $83 million all in;
- once the sets were amortized, Variety put the per-episode cost at around $5 million, which HBO insisted was normal for its top shelf;
- stretch that rate across the full 56-episode, five-season run and you're in the ballpark of a quarter-billion dollars for the whole series — napkin math, but the napkin is sweating.
Was it worth it? HBO ordered season two less than two days after the premiere aired, so they clearly thought so. Somewhere in Greenpoint, a $5 million fake Jersey Shore agrees.