The first Harry Potter movie cost $125 million to make, start to finish. Simply getting HBO’s television version built and into production has already cost considerably more than that, and the series is still two months away from its premiere.
The show is a faithful new adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s books, with each season set to tell one book across a planned seven-season run. Newcomer Dominic McLaughlin leads the young cast as Harry, and production is based at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in England, the longtime home of the Harry Potter films.
The figures come from UK earnings filings for Plum Jam Productions, the HBO-owned company behind the series, reported by TheWrap. The filings put £130.6 million, nearly $175 million, into 2025, the year filming began at Leavesden, on top of £18.4 million, about $25 million, spent on preparations in 2024. Together, roughly £150 million, or just over $200 million, has gone into setting the series up and starting production.
The episode budgets match that scale. A person familiar with the matter told TheWrap that per-episode costs are on par with House of the Dragon, valued at $15 million to $20 million an episode, and The Last of Us, at $10 million to $15 million an episode. The final season of Game of Thrones reportedly cost about $15 million per episode.
A large share of the early money is not episodes at all, but infrastructure: sets and facilities built once to serve the full seven-season plan instead of being rebuilt year after year. Only the first two seasons are officially greenlit so far, and Season 2 began production this fall. The build even includes an actual school building at the studio for the child actors to attend over the next decade of filming.
Harry Potter premieres Christmas Day on HBO and HBO Max. Judging by what has already been spent before the first episode airs, HBO is building this version of Hogwarts to stand for a very long time.