‘Game of Thrones’ season 7: Peter Dinklage, Emilia Clarke, Lena Headey, others see raises

The final two seasons (presumably) of “Game of Thrones” will start airing next year, and we’re now hearing that some members of the show’s original cast are going to be paid rather handsomely for some of their efforts.

According to Deadline, the likes of Peter Dinklage (Tyrion), Kit Harington (Jon), Lena Headey (Cersei), Emilia Clarke (Daenerys) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime) are set to make $500,000 an episode for the next two seasons of the show, a significant increase from the $300,000 they each earned per episode for the current season. If there are thirteen episodes still to go for the series, that means that they will each roughly $6.5 million … provided that they all survive until the very end. That’s a great salary, and while it may seem enormous, it could be a bargain when you think about how some members of the main cast for “The Big Bang Theory” make $1 million an episode, and that show is shorter and has 22-24 episodes a season.

Now that we’ve said this about the actor salaries, let’s also acknowledge that there are a number of other reasons why “Game of Thrones” is one of the most expensive shows on TV. After all, you’ve got a lot of CGI work, multiple locations, a massive crew, and of course enormous sets that take months to build. If it weren’t for the enormous ratings, we’re not quite sure how HBO would be able to afford all of this in the slightest.

Season 6 concludes on Sunday night; we expect season 7 to premiere in the spring.

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