What We Do in the Shadows Budget

What Is the Budget of What We Do in the Shadows (2019)?

What We Do in the Shadows (2019), the FX mockumentary-format vampire comedy created by Jemaine Clement and based on the 2014 New Zealand film he co-wrote and co-directed with Taika Waititi, was produced on an estimated per-episode budget of approximately $3,000,000 to $4,500,000 across its six-season run from March 2019 through December 2024. Across the seventy-episode order, the cumulative production spend is estimated at approximately $210,000,000 to $315,000,000. FX produced the series in-house under FX Productions and FX Networks, with Clement, Waititi, Paul Simms, and other key creatives serving as executive producers across the six-season run.

The per-episode tariff reflected the show's Toronto-shoot production base, the recurring large ensemble of principal vampire-and-familiar cast members (Kayvan Novak as Nandor, Matt Berry as Laszlo, Natasia Demetriou as Nadja, Harvey Guillén as Guillermo, and from season two Mark Proksch as Colin Robinson and other recurring cast), the elaborate Staten-Island-stand-in production design, and the hybrid practical-and-digital visual-effects work rendering the show's recurring vampire-specific storytelling elements. The mockumentary-format multi-camera production model kept the show's per-episode tariff at the low-mid end of contemporary FX premium-cable comedy economics.

Key Budget Allocation Categories

What We Do in the Shadows's per-episode FX premium-cable comedy spend broke down across the cost centres typical of a contemporary mockumentary-format multi-camera ensemble comedy, with several show-specific items reflecting the vampire-specific storytelling framework:

• Above-the-Line Cast: Kayvan Novak as Nandor the Relentless, Matt Berry as Laszlo Cravensworth, Natasia Demetriou as Nadja of Antipaxos, Harvey Guillén as Guillermo de la Cruz, and Mark Proksch as Colin Robinson (from season two onward) anchored the principal vampire-and-familiar ensemble. The cast worked at standard contemporary FX premium-cable comedy rates with senior leads at modest above-the-line premium tier across the later seasons. Doll-and-puppet-character voice work (including the Doll character voiced by Beanie Feldstein) added incremental voice-cast cost.
• Toronto Production: Principal photography took place in Toronto, with the Ontario Production Services Tax Credit and Canadian Film or Video Production Services Tax Credit programs providing meaningful production cost offset. The Toronto shoot served as a stand-in for the show's Staten Island, New York narrative setting, with Toronto practical exteriors and constructed period-and-contemporary interiors rendering the recurring vampire-house production design.
• Period Vampire Production Design: The recurring period-vampire-house set (constructed on Toronto production stages with practical interior dressing across multiple floors and rooms) plus the recurring secondary sets including the basement-vampire-coffin sets, the vampire-council-and-supernatural-community-set pieces, and the recurring contemporary Staten-Island-stand-in environments formed the show's recurring production-design line.
• Visual Effects and Practical Vampire Work: The recurring vampire-specific storytelling elements (bat-transformations, mist-transformations, flying sequences, hypnosis sequences, and the recurring period-flashback sequences) required hybrid practical-and-digital effects work. The VFX vendor mix and recurring weekly vampire-effects work formed one of the show's defining non-cast cost centres.
• Period-Flashback Production: The recurring period-flashback sequences across multiple centuries of the principal vampires' backstories required period costume, makeup, set, and prop builds across multiple distinct historical settings. The recurring period-flashback line absorbed a meaningful incremental cost above standard contemporary mockumentary-format comedy norms.
• Original Music and Source-Music: An original score plus recurring contemporary needle drops and period-music source-music selections anchored the show's sonic identity. The recurring weekly music-licensing line absorbed a standard contemporary FX premium-cable comedy cost.
• Guest Cast and Celebrity Cameos: The show's recurring guest-cast roster (including notable celebrity vampire cameos from Tilda Swinton, Wesley Snipes, Evan Rachel Wood, Mark Hamill, and broader contemporary comedy-and-genre celebrity-guest performers) absorbed a recurring guest-cast budget line. The vampire-council celebrity-cameo episodes drew particular budget commitment.
• FX Premium-Cable Delivery: Picture editing, sound, ADR, and FX delivery ran through FX Productions's contemporary premium-cable comedy post pipeline. The premium-cable post specification anchored the show's 4K and high-dynamic-range delivery for FX and FX on Hulu across the run.

How Does What We Do in the Shadows's Budget Compare to Similar Series?

At an estimated $3,000,000 to $4,500,000 per episode, What We Do in the Shadows sat in the contemporary FX premium-cable comedy mid tier, comparable to other contemporary FX and premium-cable comedies. The comparison set illustrates how its production scale stacked up:

• It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005): Estimated per-episode budget approximately $1,200,000 to $2,500,000. FX's long-running flagship comedy priced below What We Do in the Shadows, reflecting the show's established multi-camera-format low-overhead production economics across its 16-plus-season FX-and-FXX run from 2005 onward.
• Atlanta (2016): Estimated per-episode budget approximately $4,000,000 to $6,000,000. FX's Donald Glover-created comedy-drama priced modestly above What We Do in the Shadows, with the gap reflecting Atlanta's broader feature-cinema-level production-and-cinematography commitment.
• Better Things (2016): Estimated per-episode budget approximately $3,000,000 to $4,000,000. FX's Pamela Adlon comedy-drama priced comparably to What We Do in the Shadows across its five-season FX run, illustrating the FX premium-cable comedy mid-tier consistency.
• Reservation Dogs (2021): Estimated per-episode budget approximately $4,000,000 to $5,500,000. FX's Taika Waititi-and-Sterlin Harjo comedy-drama priced modestly above What We Do in the Shadows across its three-season FX run, with the Waititi production-credibility framework anchoring both shows in the broader FX premium-cable comedy slate.
• What We Do in the Shadows (2014 film): Budget approximately $1,800,000 | Worldwide $6,900,000. The original Jemaine Clement-and-Taika Waititi New Zealand feature film cost approximately half of a single FX television episode of the subsequent television series, illustrating the gap between low-budget New Zealand mockumentary feature filmmaking and contemporary FX premium-cable mockumentary-format television comedy.
• Wellington Paranormal (2018): Estimated per-episode budget approximately $300,000 to $500,000. The New Zealand TVNZ-and-CW spin-off of the What We Do in the Shadows feature (covering the supporting Police characters) priced at approximately 10 to 15 percent of the FX What We Do in the Shadows series tariff, illustrating the gap between New Zealand-network mockumentary-format television comedy and FX premium-cable mockumentary-format television comedy.

What We Do in the Shadows Season Performance and Syndication

What We Do in the Shadows premiered on FX on March 27, 2019 to approximately 575,000 viewers in its initial linear FX broadcast, with subsequent FX on Hulu streaming engagement growing the cross-platform audience across the run. The economic framework across the run breaks down as follows:

• Per-Episode Budget: approximately $3,000,000 to $4,500,000 across the six-season, seventy-episode run
• Total Series Investment: approximately $210,000,000 to $315,000,000 across the seventy-episode order
• Network: FX in the United States; FX on Hulu (later Hulu and Disney+ Hulu integration) for U.S. streaming; international FX and Disney-licensed distribution worldwide
• Audience/Ratings: season-one premiere drew approximately 575,000 cross-platform viewers; the show grew steadily across seasons two and three with the FX on Hulu streaming engagement anchoring the show's long-tail audience growth across the early 2020s
• International Distribution: BBC Two carried the show in the UK; Disney-licensed distribution and the broader Disney-international-distribution-framework served the show's global rollout across the run
• Library/Syndication Value: FX on Hulu (later Hulu and Disney+) anchored the show's long-tail catalogue presence; the show remains available across the broader Disney premium-cable streaming presence and through Disney library distribution

FX confirmed in April 2024 that the show would conclude after its sixth season, which premiered on October 21, 2024 and aired through December 16, 2024. The decision reflected the creative team's sense that the show had reached a natural conclusion point after six seasons and seventy episodes, with Clement, Waititi, Simms, and the principal cast all publicly endorsing the wind-down. The show's sixth-season finale provided a definitive conclusion to the principal vampire-and-familiar ensemble's storyline.

The show's long-tail catalogue presence on FX on Hulu (later Hulu and Disney+) has remained steady across the early 2020s, with consistent streaming engagement anchoring its ongoing audience relationship. The Wellington Paranormal television spin-off in New Zealand and the broader contemporary mockumentary-format comedy landscape remain anchored by the What We Do in the Shadows franchise as one of the defining contemporary mockumentary-format television comedies of the late 2010s and early 2020s.

What We Do in the Shadows Production History

Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi co-wrote and co-directed the original What We Do in the Shadows feature film, a New Zealand mockumentary-format vampire comedy that premiered at Sundance in January 2014 and was released theatrically in 2014 and 2015 to broadly positive critical reception and modest commercial performance. The film established the mockumentary-format vampire-flatmates premise that anchored Clement's subsequent television-series expansion of the property.

FX acquired the television-series adaptation rights in 2017 to 2018, with Clement attached as creator-and-executive producer alongside Waititi and Paul Simms as co-executive producers. The Staten Island, New York setting of the television adaptation transposed the original film's Wellington, New Zealand premise into a contemporary American premium-cable comedy framework, with the new principal vampire-and-familiar ensemble (Nandor, Laszlo, Nadja, Guillermo, and Colin Robinson) replacing the original film's Viago, Vladislav, Deacon, and Petyr.

Principal photography across the six-season run took place in Toronto, with the Ontario Production Services Tax Credit and Canadian Film or Video Production Services Tax Credit programs providing meaningful production cost offset. The Toronto shoot served as a stand-in for the show's Staten Island, New York narrative setting. Casting Kayvan Novak as Nandor the Relentless, Matt Berry as Laszlo Cravensworth, Natasia Demetriou as Nadja of Antipaxos, and Harvey Guillén as Guillermo de la Cruz anchored the principal ensemble; Mark Proksch joined as energy vampire Colin Robinson from season two onward.

The recurring vampire-specific storytelling elements (bat-transformations, mist-transformations, flying sequences, hypnosis sequences, and the recurring period-flashback sequences) were rendered through hybrid practical-and-digital effects work across the six-season run, with the recurring vampire-council celebrity-cameo episodes (Tilda Swinton, Wesley Snipes, Evan Rachel Wood, Mark Hamill, and broader contemporary comedy-and-genre celebrity-guest performers) drawing particular production and audience attention. FX confirmed in April 2024 that the show would conclude after the sixth season, with the season-six finale providing a definitive conclusion to the principal vampire-and-familiar ensemble's storyline on December 16, 2024.

Awards and Recognition

What We Do in the Shadows received steady Primetime Emmy and Critics' Choice Television Awards recognition across the six-season run. The series received multiple Primetime Emmy nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series across the late 2010s and early 2020s, with Harvey Guillén receiving Critics' Choice Television Awards recognition for his Guillermo de la Cruz supporting performance.

The show was nominated at the Primetime Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series, Outstanding Directing for a Comedy Series, and multiple craft categories across the seasons. The Television Critics Association recognised the show with multiple Outstanding Achievement in Comedy nominations, and the Saturn Awards consistently nominated the show in the genre-television-comedy categories across the run.

Retrospective interest in the show has centred on its position within the broader contemporary mockumentary-format television comedy landscape (alongside Parks and Recreation, Modern Family, and Abbott Elementary) and within the broader Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi production filmography (alongside Flight of the Conchords, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and Thor: Ragnarok). The show is most often cited today as one of the defining contemporary FX premium-cable comedies of the late 2010s and early 2020s.

Critical Reception

What We Do in the Shadows received broadly positive critical reception across its six-season run. The series holds a 97% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on approximately 110 critic reviews for the first season, with strong subsequent-season ratings across the run. The Metacritic score for the first season was 78 out of 100, with subsequent seasons consistently in the high-70s-to-low-80s range.

The New York Times's Mike Hale called the show "the rare television spin-off of a beloved feature that genuinely earns its premise across the run," while The Hollywood Reporter's Daniel Fienberg wrote that the series "delivers Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry, Natasia Demetriou, and Harvey Guillén in one of the best ensemble comedies on contemporary television." Variety's Caroline Framke praised the show's "willingness to commit to the mockumentary-format vampire premise with rigour and patience." Indiewire's Steve Greene noted that "the show consistently delivers its premise with surprise and craft across the six-season run."

Critical reception across the six-season run remained consistently strong, with reviewers regularly highlighting the principal vampire-and-familiar ensemble chemistry, the recurring period-flashback sequences, the recurring vampire-council celebrity-cameo episodes, and Harvey Guillén's Guillermo de la Cruz performance as the standouts of the show. Retrospective reappraisal has been positive, with the show frequently cited in surveys of late-2010s and early-2020s premium-cable comedy and within the broader contemporary mockumentary-format television comedy tradition.