Criticism of Arcane's reported $250 million budget is "silly from our perspective," says LoL co-creator, and Hollywood just can't understand "why we would do this"

Jinx smiling during the Netflix animated series 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."

Ensure you never miss an episode with our Arcane season 2 release schedule. For more, check out our guide to the best Netflix shows for some viewing inspiration.

Ali Jones
News Editor

I'm GamesRadar's news editor, working with the team to deliver breaking news from across the industry. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.

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