Nov 7, 2024

New Report Says “Arcane” is the Most Expensive Series to Produce in Animation History

Riot Games' animated series Arcane cost nearly $14 million per episode to produce and market, making it quite possibly the most expensive series in animation history.

As a result of the exorbitant production costs, the second season of Arcane, premiering this week on Netflix, will be the final season, even though it was originally intended to consist of five seasons.

Details on the show's finances were obtained through a Variety report, which puts the total production cost of the show's two seasons and 18 episodes at $250 million. According to the article, the first nine-episode season cost over $80 million, and the following season cost nearly $100 million. On top of that, Riot spent $60 million of its own money to promote the first season of “Arcane,” which, according to Variety, was “exponentially more than what studios typically spend for shows they don't distribute and far more than Netflix itself spent It was a “large amount.

As a result of this heavy spending, “Arcane” won nine Annie Awards and became the first streaming series to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Program. However, these honors did not seem to justify the show's high production costs. According to insiders, production costs were inflated by a “labor-intensive approach” and “delays in script delivery,” as well as the game company's inexperience in linear entertainment production. (Incidentally, the series is produced by French animation studio Fortiche.)

The series will likely end up in the red for Riot; Netflix is paying Riot's parent company, Tencent, a It is said to have paid Riot a licensing fee of $3 million per episode. Tencent paid an additional $3 million per episode.

In response to a trade journal article on Arcane's budget (Riot has not confirmed the specific figures provided in the Variety article), Marc Merrill, Riot's co-founder and chief product officer, said, “We're happy enough with what it cost us to deliver a show that is worth players' time. I am fully satisfied with the cost incurred,” he wrote, defending the expense.

Merrill added:

Our ambitions in entertainment have not changed. We never intended to operate on a traditional schedule like a traditional studio. What changed as we learned more was our expectations of ourselves: we realized that it would take much more time to get it right than we had originally anticipated, so we re-aligned our development, output goals, and team with that in mind.

Variety's report delves deeply into Riot's stalled plans to expand into entertainment production and its decision to refocus on League of Legends, a game that has already generated billions in revenue through its massively multiplayer online battle arena game is worth a read, as it delves deeply into the