A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms was made for a fraction of the budget of Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon

Ballooning budgets are everywhere, as you already know. TV, movies, games, it really is a head-scratcher when you think about where all these hundreds of millions of dollars go. Even bringing a budget down to the tens of millions is seen as a win to big TV networks, as HBO's Francesca Orsi explained.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, HBO's head of drama revealed that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms managed to keep costs down while maintaining a high level of quality, especially when it came to the battles.

"I have an example that really took me aback. We're doing a Game of Throne spinoff titled A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms for under $10 million in episode," Orsi said, explaining that this number is peanuts "relative to what Game of Thrones or House of the Dragon cost episodically. And the battle sequences that the directors achieved match those across Game of Thrones and are a fraction of the price, so it's a lesson for us that we need to be challenging these budgets."

It's worth mentioning that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms likely doesn't need the CGI that Thrones or House of the Dragon does, as there's not going to be any dragons in the time that the story is set. Still, we'll have to see if the upcoming spinoff can accomplish what its predecessors did without breaking the bank.