Iranian Gov’t Allocated $54 Million to Produce One TV Series

The Iranian government has so far allocated some 2.7 trillion tomans ($54 million) from the public budget for the production of a television series titled “His Eminence Moses and Salman,” new research by Iran Open Data shows.

The budget bill for the past Persian year, which ended in March, allocated a total of 700 billion tomans ($14.2 million) to the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) to produce the series, the collaborative initiative said in a recent article.

An additional 2 trillion tomans ($40.6 billion) were allocated in the budget bill for the current year – six times the budget of the Student Affairs Organization, more than 4 times the budget of the National Emergency Organization and more than twice the budget of Sharif University of Technology.

Iran Open Data also pointed out that the production costs of the first 25 episodes of the popular Turkish TV series “Magnificent Century” totalled less than $5 million – a twelfth of the budget allocated to the “His Eminence Moses and Salman.” 

The overall budget estimate for the Iranian TV series is unknown, but some members of parliament have mentioned the figure of 4-10 trillion tomans ($81 million-$203 million). The producer of the series, Mahmoud Rezvani, has rejected these estimates, without giving any figure.

IRIB officials are hopeful that the TV series will be ready in the next five years, which suggests that its costs will also be included in government budgets for the coming years.

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Click here to read Iran Open Data's article in English. The original article in Persian is available here. 

Founded in 2016, Iran Open Data (IOD) strives to make Iran’s official data accessible, available and re-usable. Not only does IOD collect and process raw datasets for researchers and experts, it also publishes exclusive data-driven articles and digital stories for the general public. Additionally, IOD conducts public data calls and surveys on often neglected or taboo issues that are rarely addressed by the government. Follow IOD for all the data-stories concerning Iran.