Riot Games co-founder and League of Legends co-creator Marc Merrill has revealed a rough estimate of the cost of making Arcane – and it's not even close to the reported $250 million figure that has been doing the rounds in recent months.
"First of all, the $250 million headline is not even accurate because that includes marketing expenses," Merrill told io9.
"The actual creation budget is significantly less than that. One of the fascinating things is that once a meme sets into people’s heads, showing up with facts counter to that narrative, it’s sometimes hard to dislodge a perspective, which is just fascinating to observe. It wasn’t quite $250 [million]. It was significantly less than that."
- League of Legends co-creator responds to report that Arcane was a "financial miss," says "people think we make things like Arcane to sell skins, when in reality we sell skins to make things like Arcane"
- Doubling-down on League of Legends' worst PR disaster in years, developer Riot locks hotly anticipated cosmetic behind $240 gacha wall
While Merrill was reluctant to give an exact figure, he was open to a "ballpark" number that requires a bit of math to work out: "It’s somewhere between 60 to 75% of that estimate."
Calculators at the ready: that brings Arcane's production budget to anywhere from $150 million to $187 million, between $65 million and $100 million less than what was originally touted.
Previously, Variety had mentioned the $250 million figure – a number that seemingly took on a life of its own and snowballed into creating its own discourse around animation production.
Most creatives were broadly supportive, with production designer and artist Jason Scheier, who worked on Blue Eye Samurai, saying on Twitter, "Let this be the example for the standard if you want artistry and quality."
Arcane's executive music producer Alex Seaver also waded into the discussion. On the rising costs of production, he told Screen Rant, "We didn't lease out the work to traditional people in film and television, which can totally work. But for something like this, the special sauce is that it's made in the building and we do all the animation in Paris at Fortiche."
Arcane season 2 may have come to an end, but there's a new League of Legends show in the works. Co-creator Christian Linke also isn't ruling out a movie project down the line. For more on the show, dive into our breakdown of the Arcane season 2 ending and why we're not getting an Arcane season 3.
