Report: It cost Riot half a billion dollars to make Arcane

It's claimed to be the most expensive animated series of all-time.

You might be wondering why it has taken Riot Games and Netflix such a lengthy amount of time to kick out two seasons of television, despite the first season of Arcane debuting to huge acclaim. Well, on top of taking the necessary time to deliver on quality, the other major factor seems to be the financials behind the project.

As per Variety, it's mentioned that Arcane cost Riot $250 million to make each season, meaning the two-season run will set the League of Legends developer back a massive $500 million.

It's suggested that this pricey undertaking is also the reason why Riot has slowly stepped away from its formerly plotted plans to further explore television and film and other forms of entertainment beyond video games, and likewise is probably also a major contributor as to why Season 2 of Arcane will be the last and why the series won't run for its formerly projected five-season arc.

Variety's own words state: "For all that talk of its aspirations, Riot has virtually nothing to show for it beyond "Arcane," which sources revealed will have cost the company approximately $250 million to produce and promote over 18 total episodes, making it far and away the most expensive animated series ever on streaming or linear TV."

Riot co-founder Marc Merrill has responded to Variety's report adding that the scaled back Arcane effort does not mean that Riot is done with its multimedia approach, but just that it is taking a different approach utilising this as a learning experience.

Merrill adds: "We were never intending to operate like a traditional studio with traditional timelines. What did change as we learned more was our expectations of ourselves: We realised that getting it right takes a lot more time than we'd originally expected, and so we recalibrated our development, output goals and teams with that in mind."

Either way, Arcane will kick off its second season later this week, when the first three episodes that make up Act 1 debut on Netflix on November 9. Following this on a weekly basis will see the arrival of Acts 2 and 3, each of which span three-episodes also.