Top 10 Most Expensive Tv Flops Ever

VOICE OVER: Rebecca Brayton
Written by Nathan Sharp

As TV slowly ventures further into big-budget productions, it's only natural that a few fall flat. Welcome to WatchMojo.com, and today we're counting down our picks for the top ten most expensive TV flops ever.

For this list, we'll be discussing some of the biggest flops in television history and ranking them based on the severity of their failures. Now, we're not saying that these shows are bad. In fact, many of them are quite good. We're only stating that they failed to find a mainstream audience and were swiftly cancelled, losing their studios a ton of money in the process.

As TV slowly ventures further into big-budget productions, it’s only natural that a few fall flat. Welcome to WatchMojo.com, and today we’re counting down our picks for the top ten most expensive TV flops ever.

For this list, we’ll be discussing some of the biggest flops in television history and ranking them based on the severity of their failures. Now, we’re not saying that these shows are bad. In fact, many of them are quite good. We’re only stating that they failed to find a mainstream audience and were swiftly cancelled, losing their studios a ton of money in the process.

#10: “Kings” (2009)

“Kings” was set to be NBC’s great drama. It was based on a biblical story, it starred the incredible Ian McShane fresh off his revolutionary performance as Al Swearengen on “Deadwood,” and the studio reportedly put up a whopping $10 million for its pilot. The subsequent episodes weren’t much cheaper, most of them coming with a $4 million bill. Judging by those numbers, we can assume that the thirteen episodes of “Kings,” including its two-part pilot, cost well over $50 million to produce. However, the show received middling reviews and viewers quickly dropped off after the first couple of episodes, resulting in “Kings’” swift cancellation. Talk about a short reign.

#9: “Battlestar Galactica” (1978-79)

Before getting a new and enduring lease on life in the 2000s, the Battlestar Galactica franchise kicked off with a tv series in the late 1970s that rode the sci-fi popularity wave of the first Star Wars film. And, like most convincing science fiction, it wasn’t cheap to produce. Each episode cost about $1 million to produce, or just under $4 million in today’s dollars. And while “Battlestar Galactica” initially saw success, it quickly sunk in the ratings when CBS moved its hit show “All in the Family” to the same time slot. ABC cancelled the show after one season, leading to protests and, unfortunately, the suicide of one fan.