They have a point.
Arcane’s second season is out and, having watched the first trio of episodes, looks to be shaping up well—both in terms of its visuals and, well, some disproportionately hype storytelling for something that spawned from League of Legends. Not that the game doesn’t have detailed and interesting lore, but ‘a landmark for animation’ wasn’t the bar I was expecting the series to cross back in 2021, and it’s still surprising me now.
Despite that, its second season will be its last, and there’s been some murmuring it’s got something to do with the fact that it took over $250 million to make and market. That’s a big, boggling number when written out like that, but it’s actually less than it seems on first blush, which is something showrunners Christian Linke and Alex Yee told Gamesradar in an interview last week.
“That number does include marketing costs associated with the release,” Linke says, “Which is not part of the budget of Arcane.” That’s not to say it wasn’t pricey, though, as Linke adds: “Arcane is a really expensive animated series—which was the point. Our dream was to create an animated series that has the fidelity of what you see in animated movies.”
It’s at this point that Yee chimes in with a thought I’m discovering is more reasonable by the second: “If you compare us to animated movies, we are dirt cheap.”
While $250 million might not seem “dirt cheap” unless you’re Scrooge McDuck, when it comes to making anything at this scale and runtime, it’s just above average—record-setting for an animated series, sure, but not even a chart topper when it comes to TV. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that Arcane’s marketing and distribution budget cost 50% of what it cost to make, which is typically what you’ll spend on movies.
That thins the raw production heft of Arcane to around $166 million. It’ll have around 18 episodes in total across its two seasons, which is $9.2 million per 40+ minute episode. While that’s definitely up there, here are a few examples of recent big-hitter TV series that were reportedly more expensive to produce than Arcane:
- House of the Dragon, around $20 million per 50-70 minute episode.
- Stranger Things season 4, around $30 million per episode (though these tend to run about one and a half to two hours).
- Rings of Power, which apparently spent a whopping $60 million per 60-75 minute episode.
Let’s compare Arcane to animated films as well, since that’s the comparison Yee drew. Disney’s Frozen 2 cost $150 million to produce one hour and 40 minutes of cinema-worthy animation. That’s about 2.5 Arcane episodes in terms of length—which would cost Netflix $23 million before marketing costs. Not too shabby, especially considering I’d go to bat for Arcane and say it’s an overall prettier piece of animation than Disney’s crowd pleasers.
Even if we’re less charitable, and thin the marketing cost out of that $250 million number to, say, 20% of the original budget, which’d be around $205 in total production costs, that’s still only $11 million an episode. Costly, about as much as The Boys season 1’s estimated budget, but not beyond all reason.
Lee also argues that, even though Arcane’s cost is definitely a big swing, the product is worth the price: “You have voice actors, where we really tried to find great talent. You have artists who we wanted to have time to really be able to put in their touches and to have so many different disciplines in this really be able to do their best and show what they could do. In a lot of ways, the money is just a reflection of the amount of effort that was put into this.”
And, you know what—they’re right. Arcane’s one of my favourite bits of animation, period, and it certainly looks appropriately pricey for the money that was poured into it. The budget is commendable and noteworthy, but only by comparison to other animated shows of its ilk—when it comes to TV and animated movies? “Dirt cheap” is actually kinda accurate.
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