Season 4 Of ‘The Witcher’ Is Over Budget And Has The Highest Costs According To Netflix

Liam Hemsworth’s debut season as the Witcher is the most expensive yet

Netflix

Netflix revealed yesterday that the fourth season of The Witcher is over-budget and cost more to make than any other instalment in the sword and sorcery series.

The fourth season is due to debut next month and has courted controversy for its casting. Australian hunk Liam Hemsworth has replaced fan favorite Henry Cavill in the title role sparking strong criticism of the first footage from the new season which was released last week. There is a lot on the line.

Saying that The Witcher is one of Netflix’s most popular shows is somewhat of an understatement. When the first season premiered in 2019 it became the streamer’s most-watched original series launch with 541 million hours viewed in its first 28 days. It went on to amass more than 1.2 billion hours of viewing so although it doesn’t come cheap, it is money well spent.

As this report explained, every season of The Witcher and its prequel Blood Origin have been made in the United Kingdom where studios benefit from a 25.5% reimbursement of the production costs incurred in the country. Part of the reimbursement process involves the studio setting up a production company in the U.K. for each programme that it makes there. The companies all have to file financial statements showing everything from the headcount and salaries to the total costs and the level of the reimbursement.

The filings are legally binding so there is no doubt about their accuracy. Likewise, the terms of the reimbursement say that the financial statements have to show the production’s entire costs, not just those incurred in the U.K. Furthermore, studios aren’t allowed to hide costs in other companies as the terms also state that there can only be one production company per programme.

The financial statements are released in stages long after the period they relate to. This starts during pre-production and continues after the premiere to give the production team time to ensure that all the bills are paid. It explains why the company behind the second season of The Witcher is still booking costs in its financial statements even though it debuted back in 2021.

Filings released yesterday reveal that it incurred $448,822 (£357,197) of costs during the year to December 31, 2024 while the Netflix subsidiary which is making the fifth season of The Witcher spent $13.4 million (£10.6 million) on pre-production ahead of the start of filming in March this year.

However, the biggest revelation was that the production company behind the fourth season spent a staggering $178.2 million (£141.8 million) last year when all the filming took place along with several months of pre-production and post-production. It brought the total costs of season four to $220.4 million (£175 million) which is higher than any other instalment (see chart below) with months of post-production still remaining after the December 31 date of the financial statements.

Its staff costs alone came to $24.5 million (£19.4 million) with employee numbers peaking at a monthly average of 309 people last year without even counting freelancers, contractors and temporary workers as they aren’t listed as employees on the books of U.K. companies even though they often represent the majority of the crew.

The financial statements reveal that “the total cost of the programme was in excess of the budgeted costs” though it also received a $56.5 million (£44.9 million) reimbursement bringing the net spending down to $163.9 million. Not only was this higher than the net spending on any other instalment of The Witcher, it was also more than double the net spending of season one. The fourth season drops on October 30, just in time for Halloween, so we will soon find out if it was money well spent.