“Hollywood struggles to understand why we chose to do this.”
The co-founder of Riot Games called the debates about Arcane’s big budget “silly” as the League of Legends animated series enters its second and final season.
Arcane has been a huge success for Netflix and Riot Games, winning over critics and League of Legends fans alike. However, it came with a hefty price tag. Earlier this month, Variety revealed that producing and promoting both seasons of Arcane, totaling 18 episodes, cost an astonishing $250 million.
Advertisement Arcane’s price tag likely makes it the most expensive animated series ever, but it’s sparked plenty of debates. Many argue that, when you break it down by cost-per-minute, Arcane is actually cheaper than animated movies from studios like Pixar.
Marc Merrill, Riot’s co-founder and chief product officer, shared his thoughts on Reddit, saying that Arcane was always planned to have two seasons.
This highlights Riot’s original plan for Arcane to have only two seasons. Marc explained that the confusion came from internal budget talks about funding “five seasons,” which was just about setting money aside for development. He clarified that it had nothing to do with Arcane’s story or creative direction.
See More: Arcane Season 2 Smashes Netflix Charts & Becomes Most Popular Show in Over 60 Countries
Merrill also commented on the large budget, saying,
From our point of view, the jokes about Arcane’s cost are silly. People are right to point out that Arcane costs about one-third to one-fourth of what Illumination or Pixar movies cost per minute.
The idea of creating high-quality animation for adults wasn’t really a thing before Arcane, so Hollywood struggles to understand why we decided to do it.
In another post, Merrill stood up for Riot’s approach, saying that all of Arcane’s huge budget goes toward hiring talented people. This includes animators, concept artists, voice actors, sound designers, storyboard artists, composers, and other creative professionals.
Merrill shared that character animation alone makes up about 80% of the budget because “we hand-animate every frame to reach this level of quality.”
Anyone who complains about the high development budget is really upset about us paying talented people and putting art first.
He added,
He also mentioned that Arcane is a great example for everyone in animation, showing the value of bigger budgets. In the Variety article, Merrill didn’t confirm the $250 million figure, but he supported the outcome.
We’re completely okay with the money spent to create a show that was worth our players’ time.
He said,
The report also shared some other interesting details, like how Riot had brought in Joe and Anthony Russo, famous for their work with Marvel, to create a League of Legends movie. But because Riot was new to making deals in Hollywood, they ended up losing $5 million. The Russos left the project because they disagreed on the script. That’s a costly creative difference.
Christian Linke, co-creator of Arcane, hinted that the team has more stories planned in the League of Legends world, Runeterra. Merrill also spoke on this, saying that while Riot wants to expand the universe, nothing has been confirmed yet.
Just because we want to do this doesn’t mean it’s easy or that we can quickly make these shows like a factory. Creating games that players enjoy is hard, and so is telling great stories and making amazing shows and movies, especially when we’re building it from the ground up for the first time.
He explained,
Arcane Season 2 will wrap up with Act 3 on November 23.
Source: IGN