Will His Dark Materials be the next Game of Thrones? | Culture

Who won the Game of Thrones? In May, analysts at Thinkmoney released estimates of the financial value of the show: HBO had spent $1.5bn on it, but taken $3bn from subscriptions alone. An anonymous Hollywood executive who blogs as the Entertainment Strategy Guy estimates the net profit at $2.2bn; series eight earned $88m per episode. By the end of the run, HBO was spending just $2.37 per viewer per series. Its showrunners, David Benioff and DB Weiss, will direct the next Star Wars trilogy; George RR Martin earned $15m a year from HBO and a further $10m from his books.

Which leaves everyone in TV asking one question: how do we get some of that action? There’s clearly no shortage of material: no self-respecting swords-and-sorcery…