So, some stories about Man in the High Castle, because I know a lot of people who worked on it and may have even been involved for a short bit.

It was literally the first show ever green lit by Amazon Prime Video. At the time, no one at Amazon knew SHIT about TV or film production. The only show that was doing numbers on what was then Amazon Streaming Video Now™ was Transparent, a knockoff of Modern Family. Bezos just wanted "our own game of thrones", so the team at Prime Video tried to replicate the formula by holding an open competition. Submit a script and an idea, and they'd give you $10,000 (that is not a lot) to make two episodes. The top 5 shows would go on the service and viewer metrics would decide who got the budget.

High Castle's producer (Frank Spotnitz) was a wizard at stretching money. He specifically looked for a cult classic in the public domain, then got Phillip Dick's daughter to work on the show basically for free, then got Ridley Scott (yes, that Ridley Scott) to help consult on production by lying and telling him the show had already won the contest. The actors were similarly sourced; Luke Kleintank (Joe Blake) had been seriously undervalued in his roles on stuff like Pretty Little Liars and so was eager to do it for cheap, especially since he was billed as the lead. The other actors were sourced similarly well. Rufus Sewell (incomparable as Obergruppenführer Smith) was literally sourced from British theater, which was insane to watch because he delivered all those performances on the first take. People couldn't believe it; he'd perform flawlessly over and over and over again while other people had to retry. The other Nazis were also sourced from the stage and paid less than TV actors, while many of the Japanese actors were pulled direct from NHK TV dramas, which meant lower salaries and shorter filming times. Alexa Davalos (Juliana Crane) was sourced directly from Clash of the Titans lmao. It was an insanely fun team of actors.

The VFX and historical accuracy teams were, I shit you not, largely sourced from the HOI4 forums. Spotnitz realized there was a community of nerds who did this shit for free and basically put out an open call. The show ended up with the most cracked WW2 autists ever and they basically did the work for free. The costumes were made on a commercial embroidery machine and some sewing machines and the VFX work was entirely done in Blender. The initial releases of the first two episodes (before they were fully brought on) had some EMBARRASSING mistakes (the SF airport was called "HIROHITO INTERNATIONAL", stuff like that) and were actually redacted a few months later. Sneaky sneaky!

Upon release, the first two episodes smashed everything Amazon had hoped for and it wasn't even a contest. Amazon threw checks at High Castle with basically no oversight and oh boy did that team of autists have fun. The marketing budget was spent in truly unhinged ways; covering subway cars in NYC with swastikas, putting up posters of Lady Liberty throwing up a Roman in Times Square, putting big ads in Shinjuku Station that said "WHAT IF WE'D PULLED IT OFF?" just the most insane atmosphere ever. There was a joke on the team that someone may be outed as a neo-Nazi or something. Regardless, the money was spent well, and we got two seasons of what may have been some of the best TV ever. They built custom Nazi mid-century modern furniture and they literally added a 10 minute Dr. Strangelove reference to the season 2 finale just because they could, and the guy they brought in to play the global Wehrmacht head actually evolved the Prussian military accent by two decades to approximate how it would have sounded in 1962. Very cool. The whole show was like that.

Anyhow, apparently the most hyped show in streaming history starting Season 2 with an idyllic picture of a perfect Nazi high school and ending with the most beloved character getting a full on Iron Guard salute in Berlin pissed off a few highly influential people because about 2 days after Season 2 dropped Amazon got some calls from, I shit you not, the ADL, who literally demanded that they be put in charge of the show. After a furious back and forth between Spotnitz and Amazon, the ADL was given control over hiring positions, the autists were mostly fired, and the entire producing staff was filled with Bay Area communists and Jewish "sensitivity consultants". That's why you hated the last two seasons; it was literally a different show. I think most of the actors quit too because the working environment went to absolute shit. What's ironic is that the HOI4 autists did a much better job authentically representing Jewish culture under the Nazi jackboot than an entire room full of the sensitivity consultants, who demanded two episodes entirely dedicated to, not shitting you, "Frank Frink's Bar Mitzvah". The show went to absolute shit in ratings, which I'm sure the ADL was fine with and had to resort to rage-baiting by letting random activists destroy the props and costumes on camera.

Sorry for the lengthy rant, but it was sad watching Greenblatt pick up the phone and just kill what may have been the best show ever released on streaming. I can share more stories if you want, but my advice to anyone watching Man In The High Castle is to stop after Season 2. Trust me. There's nothing beyond that. Not a place of honor, etc.