Netflix sure has a lot of money to spend, especially in light of recently canning its animation department.

The focus seems to be on the fourth season of Stranger Things, which is dead-set on being the most expensive season of the sci-fi horror 80s show yet. According to a Wall Street Journal report, each episode allegedly costs US$30 million.

This piece of news came out in the WSJ’s article about Netflix being more cost-conscious after years of “prioritizing growth over cost-efficiency”. The company needed to churn out low-costing crowd pleasers to fund something like Stranger Things.

“Under-the-radar, relatively low-cost hits are necessary to balance out the costs for big-ticket programming such as the special-effects-filled show Stranger Things, whose new season has a per-episode cost of $30 million, according to people close to the show.”

This puts Stranger Things Season 4 above the Halo TV series’ budget of US$10 million per episode, and Game of Thrones’ final season that’s worth US$15 million per episode. TV shows aren’t getting any cheaper, come to think of it, but it does show that the Stranger Things brand is strong and does bring in subscribers. Hence, the huge escalating budgets.