“The market for this didn’t exist before Arcane”

(Image credit: Netflix)

The co-founder of League of Legends studio Riot Games is the latest voice to step in and defend spin-off series Arcane amid reports of its $250 million budget.

In a comment on Reddit, Riot Games co-founder and chief product officer Marc Merrill explained why Arcane is ending with Season 2, saying that the show was always intended to run for two seasons and that Riot has more stories it wants to tell within its world. He also commented on reports of the show’s $250 million budget, a figure that would make it the most expensive animated show ever produced.

“Since I’m here I’ll add – the ‘lol @ the cost’ of Arcane arguments are silly from our perspective,” Merrill commented towards the end of his comment. “As people have correctly pointed out the cost per minute of Arcane is about 1/3 to 1/4 of what Illumination / Pixar films cost.”

The reason why people are struggling to wrap their heads around that figure, Merrill claims, is that “the market for […] high-quality, adult-focused animation didn’t exist before Arcane so Hollywood has a hard time getting their head around why we would do this.” He later clarified that he was referring to Western markets, rather than international audiences.

In a follow-up comment, Merrill notes that “all of Arcane’s budget goes to talent,” and that “the character animation alone makes up about 80% of the budget,” because “we hand animate every frame to hit this type of quality.” Those remarks are similar to those made by Arcane showrunner Christian Linke, who told GamesRadar+ that while the $250 million figure was not a true reflection of the show’s budget due to associated costs like marketing, it is “a reflection of the amount of effort that was put into this.”