The Big Picture by Ben Fritz

Author:Ben Fritz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The $400 Million TV Show

When Sony’s television executives first told Michael Lynton about their plans for Breaking Bad, there was a pause, like a record scratch in a movie, as the studio chairman looked up from his desk with a mystified look on his face. “That is the craziest and worst idea for a television show I have ever heard,” he told Mosko’s TV production chiefs Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg.

Without the benefit of hindsight, you certainly can’t blame him. Who, anyone in their right mind would probably ask, would want to watch a show about a depressed, middle-aged chemistry teacher who decides to make money for his family before his imminent death from cancer by cooking crystal meth?

This was 2006, many years before True Detective and Stranger Things. Sony was just inching its way back into series production. Television was still primarily a broadcast network game, and offbeat, daring programs were virtually nonexistent. In a year when 24 won the Emmy for best drama series, it was pretty difficult to imagine that a show like Breaking Bad could draw an audience.

But AMC, a network formerly called American Movie Classics, which in the mid-2000s was known primarily for endless repeats of not-so-classic films like Speed and Predator, decided it needed to take some risks to remain relevant. So it rolled the dice with Mad Men, a cerebral show about advertising set in the 1960s, and on Breaking Bad.

Lynton rarely expressed any passion for individual movies or TV shows, but he also rarely stood in the way when his creative executives felt it. “Hey, guys, it’s your career,” he told Erlicht and Van Amburg. “If you really think this is that great, you should go ahead with it.”

In reality, it wasn’t a show Lynton had reason to give much thought to. Shot in New Mexico to take advantage of that state’s generous production tax credit and made without visual effects or major stars, it wasn’t particularly expensive to produce. And even if the Sony Pictures CEO’s prediction was wrong and Breaking Bad was a success, it didn’t seem there was a meaningful amount of money to be made. Sony executives initially projected it would earn a profit of $19 million over four seasons. Which was fine, because that was the cable television business in the mid-2000s. But it was insignificant compared to the profits from, say, a Spider-Man movie. Or so everyone assumed.

Breaking Bad wasn’t initially a hit in the ratings, averaging fewer than two million viewers for each of its first four seasons, which aired between 2008 and 2012. But it was a critical favorite and beloved by the viewers who watched Bryan Cranston’s slow transformation from Mr. Chips to Scarface. It was buzzy, beloved programming, which was exactly what AMC wanted, as it kept paying Sony for more episodes.

It was also exactly what Netflix wanted: a binge-worthy show that lots of people had initially missed on television and wanted to catch up on, to see what the big deal was.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.