Arcane is officially the most expensive anime series in history

This week, League of Legends players and Netflix subscribers are eagerly awaiting the return ofArcane. Following its release in 2021, the first season of the animated series was already breaking surprising records. The sad rivalry between Vi and Jinx did not fail to fascinate spectators who then propelled the program to first place in the streaming platform rankings in 85 different countries. The audience success and critical success were quickly followed by a real coronation at the 2022 Emmy Awards ceremony, with four awards out of five nominations.

This Saturday, November 9, the first three episodes of season 2 ofArcane will therefore enter the platform at the red N with a sacred heritage to respect. But according to a new report published by Variety, Riot Games did not skimp on spending to reproduce the same enthusiasm. According to American media sources, the first burst of 9 episodes would have cost 80 million dollars to produce, while the second would approach 100 million dollars. Adding to that a huge promotional budget that Riot took out of its own pocket, the total cost ofArcane would reach 250 million dollars : which makes it the most expensive animated series in history (television and streaming combined).

If Marc Merrill – co-founder and product manager at Riot – did not wish to confirm this Price, he still declared that he was “more than comfortable with the expense that had to be made to offer a show worthy of the expectations of our players“. Unfortunately, it seems that this colossal budget has put obstacles in the way of other projects of this type.

What future for entertainment at Riot?

When Nicolo Laurent was still CEO at Riot, he said he wanted to do a video game studio “the entertainment business of the 21st century“. It was at this time that many projects were started, but almost none ended up seeing the light of day. Today, Marc Merrill claims that this sentence had been misinterpreted but it is clear that there are still many projects on standby, such as a live action series or an animated film. Still according to information from Variety, Riot would have been caught up by the reality behind the production of Arcane and the astronomical expenses that resulted from it.

The co-founder of the company still wanted to respond to the media, and affirms that their objectives have not changed: “Our entertainment ambitions have not changed. We never intended to operate like a traditional studio with traditional deadlines. What changed as we learned more was our own expectations of ourselves: we realized that it was taking much longer than expected to get it right, and so we recalibrated our development, our production objectives and our teams taking this reality into account.”

It is therefore not surprising thatArcane end after only two seasons, despite an initial pitch of five seasons. This conclusion does not, however, exclude the development of a new series signed Fortiche in another region of the League of Legends world. A little detour to Ionia would be nice, right? Waiting for, Fortiche and Riot will meet us on November 9, 16 and 23 to discover the ins and outs of the war between Piltover and Zaun.

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