How Much The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live Costs Per Episode

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"The Walking Dead," for as big as it has become in the realm of multimedia franchises, had relatively humble beginnings. It started life as a black and white Image Comics series from creator Robert Kirkman before eventually becoming a show on AMC. It then became the biggest series on cable TV for a time, later giving way to an entire universe of "Walking Dead" spin-offs, which is still going strong to this day. And one of the most ambitious (and expensive) of these shows came in 2024 in the form of "The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live."

The series was all about resolving the love story between Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira). Can they find each other and who they were in a place and situation unlike any they've ever known before? "The Ones Who Live" resolves a couple of key cliffhangers, most notably Lincoln's Rick leaving "The Walking Dead" during season 9, with Gurira's Michonne departing in season 10 on a quest to find her beloved. So, for longtime fans of the show, this was a big deal.

During the first season of "The Walking Dead" on AMC, the show cost around $3.4 million per episode, per Forbes. That number was reduced to $2.75 million in season 2, amazingly enough. But while that number eventually went up, it was not nearly as expensive as other major series on the air at that time.

That all having been said, "The Ones Who Live" didn't come at a bargain for AMC. According to a 2023 report by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, the show cost a whopping $82 million. With a six-episode season, that breaks down to just over $13.6 million per episode. Even if we account for inflation, "Walking Dead" would have only cost around $5 million per episode in today's dollars. Needless to say, this miniseries represented a major increase in cost for the network.

There are various reasons for the increase in cost. The pandemic drove up production costs all across Hollywood, which is something the industry is still very much reckoning with. Additionally, as any show goes on, it will naturally become more expensive thanks to cast salaries and, in many cases, having bigger stories to tell. That's why the final season of "Game of Thrones" cost a whopping $15 million per episode. In this case, Lincoln and Gurira rightfully wanted to be paid handsomely for their participation.

There's more to it than just that, though. AMC originally had even more ambitious plans when it came to resolving this story, intending to make a whole trilogy of "Walking Dead" movies starring Lincoln. For various reasons, those films didn't happen, but the existence of that plan is important when it comes to understanding why this show was so expensive to produce relative to other series in the "Walking Dead" universe.

Essentially, the story that was to be told in those movies was turned into a miniseries. While changes were undoubtedly made along the way, it was still cinematic in scale. That sort of thing doesn't come cheap, particularly when it's all set amidst the backdrop of a zombie-infested wasteland. Heck, it's still a lot cheaper than Amazon's "Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power," which cost an eye-melting $465 million for a single season.

"The Ones Who Live" was met with a generally warm response critically, which may well have helped justify the cost. Also, as AMC continues to build out this universe, being able to complete this important story can add value to the "Walking Dead" franchise in the future. It was, in many ways, a longer term investment.

You can grab "The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live" on Blu-ray or DVD from Amazon.