When “The Get Down” debuted its first six episodes on Netflix this summer, Baz Luhrmann’s music driven series was preceded with plenty of conversation about its tumultuous production. The series went through a couple of showrunners, and saw its budget balloon with reports that it was costing nearly $11 million per episode (for comparison, “Game Of Thrones” costs $10 million per episode), which even for the cash rich Netflix, is a lot of money. However, not only does it now seem that “The Get Down” cost even more than initially reported, it may also be a disappointing flop for the streaming service.
Deadline reports that thanks to various extra costs and overruns, the finally tally for the first twelve episodes of “The Get Down” will wind up costing Netflix $16 million each. Ouch. That’s a hefty price tag, and one that’s only sure to get bigger as production on the next six episodes isn’t finished. And this is made even worse by the fact that there isn’t really an audience flocking to the show.
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According to a study by Symphony Advanced Media (via Variety), the viewer numbers for “The Get Down” are rather dismal. After its first 31 days on the service, “The Get Down” earned 3.2 million viewers in the U.S. To put that in perspective, “Stranger Things” snared 13.23 million viewers in same time frame, and obviously at a much smaller cost. Meanwhile, Parrot Analytics measured the demand for the show, and have seen it flagging week by week since it debuted.
Of course, Netflix doesn’t release their viewership numbers, and always says that anyone claiming to have cracked their data is wrong. And even if that’s true, just anecdotally, there doesn’t seem to be much chatter out there for “The Get Down.” Even hitmakers like Netflix occasionally miss the mark, and we’ll see what the future holds for show. But if something like “Flaked” can get a second season, I guess anything is possible.