How Wednesday Season 2 Budget per Episode Compares to Other Netflix Shows

Without a doubt, Netflix's Wednesday was one of the streaming giant's biggest hits of the past year, not only launching Jenna Ortega into superstardom, but earning a slew of Emmy nominations and gluing millions of people to their devices. And while the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes halted the development of the second season, the show has been renewed for the next outing, and the budget allocated to it may surprise you.

It's no secret that Netflix likes to spend a lot of money on its shows, with Stranger Things and One Piece being the most prominent examples, but it looks like Wednesday is somehow not getting the same treatment as the aforementioned shows, despite being the service's biggest hit of 2022.

Cheap to produce

According to various sources, the upcoming second season won't boast a huge budget, with only $5 million to $7 million being spent on each episode. While those numbers sound pretty significant, especially in comparison to what network shows get from CBS or NBC, a lot of other, different Netflix shows get significantly bigger budgets.

Take Ozark, for example. The critically and commercially acclaimed crime drama wasn't as massively popular as Wednesday, but it still earned $8 million per episode. Also, the critically hated The Witcher has a staggering $10 million per episode budget, although in its case that can be explained by the tons of CGI needed to make the show work.

The same can't be said for The Crown, which cost Netflix $13 million per episode to produce.

Of course, Wednesday is still a very young show, and the second season will have to prove if it really deserves budgets similar to Stranger Things', but the fact that Netflix allocated $15 million per episode for The Sandman and $18 million per episode for One Piece is a bit troubling for fans of Ortega, to say the least.

After all, Wednesday is a show with supernatural elements, and it can really benefit from some extra money, don't you think?