They do seem to be willing to spend money on Flash though. Firestorm could eventually be a spinoff character. Plus, I doubt getting a guest appearance from Victor Garber, even if say, it's four episodes is as cheap as getting say, somebody else from the CW. They may not have "24" money, but they do seem to have more than the average CW show.
Yeah, but while Flash is picking up Victor Garber, Arrow picked up Brandon Routh, and before that Summer Glau and John Barrowman. Vampire Diaries has been headlining Somerhalder as its star and has an effects budget not too dissimilar to the Flash. Then you have Supernatural with more non-CW guest stars than you can shake a stick at. Don't know anything about
The Originals, but all of CW's high competition primetime dramas: Arrow, Flash, TVD and The Originals all seem to come in around 2 million per episode to help compete against things like Grey's Anatomy, NCIS and Dancing with the Stars.
Looking at the production quality, there's not really any difference between Arrow and Flash. One just has a speedster instead of fight scenes, but one's not necessarily more expensive than the other. It's just whether the ten guys you're paying are working on choreography or animation all day. The time slot after that, with Jane The Virgin, Supernatural, The 100 and Reign is noticeably lower in production value, with it being least noticeable on Jane, as that doesn't require much beyond acting and location scouting.
So Flash is still top tier, and may even get a boost next season because it is the most successful, but it's not getting significantly more money than CW's other dramas in the same timeslot on different nights.
So when you compare a Flash show with, say, a Firestorm show, you're talking about a world of difference. Slow mo is relatively cheap. In fact, Amell reported some of the slow mo for Flash vs Arrow is being done the old fashioned way by the actor himself. Even the jump cuts with a flurry of blur and lightning is relatively cheap. We've all seen Smallville with it's quick entry and exit stuff. This is a world of difference in cost from someone walking around with his head on fire, or floating casually off the ground, or turning practical items into other practical items in a way that looks natural and believable as well as cool. Now, I could be wrong, perhaps Firestorm will prove to be even cheaper than Flash and he'll appear on screen as much as Barry does in costume, which isn't all that much after all, and use his powers freely rather than just in one climactic moment in the episode. But from the little bit I do know about computer animation, Firestorm isn't going to use his powers very often, or to great effect, and he's going to spend virtually all his time on the ground, like Clark Kent from Smallville, or even Superman from Adventures of Lois and Clark.
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