Riot Games’ Arcane is a show-stopper of a series that has been turning heads since the first season dropped in 2021. Fans are now getting deep into the highly anticipated second season of the show, but recently a stat surfaced showing just how much of a financial burden producing the series was on Riot Games.
It was confirmed in an interview with Variety that Arcane cost a whopping $250 million to produce in full. That makes it the most expensive animated series to land on linear or streaming television services ever.
Money Well Spent
Arcane boasts a phenomenal cast, stellar acting, and mind-blowing visuals, which is par for the course when it comes to Riot Games’ animated sequences. The company has long focused on piecing together some of the best visual content in the business, such as the punchy animated promos they assemble for the League of Legends World Championship year after year.
In an interview with Variety, co-founder of Riot, Marc Merrill, suggested that despite the bloated cost, the company isn’t wavering on the animation front:
Our ambitions in entertainment haven’t changed.
We were never intending to operate like a traditional studio with traditional timelines. What did change as we learned more was our expectations of ourselves: We realized that getting it right takes a lot more time than we’d originally expected, and so we recalibrated our development, output goals and teams with that in mind.
In addition, Merrill addressed the cost of producing Arcane:
We’re more than comfortable with the spend it took to deliver a show that was worthy of our players’ time.
League of Legends is one of the most popular games ever made, and it boasts a phenomenal esports ecosystem that pulls in millions of viewers with ease. The recent League of Legends World Championship broke viewership records as the event’s grand final series was streamed live from London.
Do you think the $250 million investment to produce 18 episodes of a show for a streaming service is appropriate? Let us know on the Insider Gaming forum.
For more Insider Gaming coverage, check out the news that Rockstar thought Donald Trump’s presidency could mess with GTA 6
Grant has been gaming for 30+ years and in the industry for 10+. You'll probably find him playing a post-apocalyptic game or an extraction shooter somewhere.
More from Grant Taylor-Hill
No by this logic other things can be made and quality 2D animation could make a comeback for less money. Would rather see that over this. The Don Bluth style, the 90’s anime style, all of that I would rather see over this. The 90’s and 2000’s animation styles bring those back it wasn’t cheap like stuff of today.
I would rather the money have been spent on finishing The Thief And Cobbler complete cut when the director was still alive. Brad Bird’s The Spirit too, Maxwell Atom’s Dead Meat, adaptions of Squee! and JTHM, revival of Motorcity, Tron Uprising, Sym-Bionic Titan, ThunderCats 2011, GLTAS in 2D, Bruce Timm directed Judas Contract, animated sequels to Fifth Element, El Superbeasto animated series, Justice League Gods & Monsters, Teen Titans 2003 returning, Bone animated in 2D, Don Bluth’s unmade projects, Ralph Bakshi’s unmade projects, all of that and so much more would be better than Arcane. A bunch of other things too. Blackford Manor that show should have been picked up a proper Bravest Warriors season 4 with Breehn Burns, like the list is massive of other things this money should have been spent on.
So better things could have been made instead? Scissor Seven on Netflix is way better than this crap and the Green Eggs and Ham cartoon too animation wise. Don’t get me started on Baki animation either all of those better than this Iron Fortress especially. Netflix should pay Yoshiaki Kawajiri to adapt Vampire Hunter D and Wicked City into animated series with his animation style instead of this.