Camelot Ended After One Season Despite $7M-Per-Episode Budget

Starz’s 2011 series Camelot offered a gritty, realistic take on Arthurian legend with Jamie Campbell Bower as Arthur. The show ran ten episodes and carried a reported budget of about $7 million per episode, making it one of the most expensive cable productions of its time.

The network canceled Camelot after a single season, citing "production challenges." Low ratings and unfavorable comparisons to Starz’s own Spartacus compounded the problem; the series holds a 44% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Its launch coincided with Game of Thrones, which quickly captured much of the fantasy audience, while other reinterpretations of familiar myths also drew viewers away.

Camelot leaned into a darker reimagining of the legend: Merlin (Joseph Fiennes) was cast as a Machiavellian figure, Guinevere (Tamsin Egerton) was married to another knight, Excalibur was reimagined as a girl whose father forges the sword, and Morgana (Eva Green) schemed for the throne.

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