Why Netflix’s newest number one show cost $250 million for only 18 episodes of TV
Netflix has a new show ruling the roost, and it is among the most expensive projects the streamer has ever commissioned.
With the new season of Outer Banks and the heartbreaking My Wife, My Abuser, Netflix’s TV is absolutely shining right now.
Despite that, this show has jumped above them all to the number one spot on the charts in the UK right now.
Advert
This is no Cinderella story however, with the show having cost $250 million, and that’s just for 18 episodes of TV.
Long gone are the days where $10 million would get you a full season of 24 episodes of prestige TV, the cost of making television has skyrocketed for far shorter seasons.
The show in question is Arcane, with the first three episodes of its second season having released this past Saturday. Check out the trailer here:
Arcane is based on the characters and lore of League of Legends, with the first season receiving rave reviews as well as being one of the streamer’s most successful shows ever.
Season one received a perfect 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and the show overall has an average rating of 9/10 on IMDb.
For context, that places it above Succession, True Detective and Fargo.
Based on how expensive just 18 episodes across two seasons have been, however, you’d kind of expect this level of quality.
The pure cost of the project was revealed in a recent report by Variety.
While Netflix is the exclusive distributor of the show, Riot Games, the team behind League of Legends, is the financial backer of the project.
The report states that the $250 million was to produce and promote the series.
This accounts for promotion, which differs when comparing to similarly budgeted shows where the ‘budget’ normally only refers to the production costs.
Despite this, Variety stated that it still was ‘far and away the most expensive animated series ever on streaming or linear TV’.
When the budget reported by the Hollywood publication was put to Riot Games, its co-founder Marc Merrill said: “We’re more than comfortable with the spend it took to deliver a show that was worthy of our players’ time.”
As its only project, Riot had the money to be able to focus purely on Arcane, with the video game reeling in $3 billion in revenue every year.
Variety said in its report: “Sources familiar with details of the production pegged the cost of the first nine 40-minute episodes at north of $80 million; the second batch of nine about to air has a price tag approaching $100 million.”
The report states that this cost ballooned due to a ‘labour-intensive approach’ and costs frequently overrunning.
This in part was due to delayed script deliveries.
The second season of the show began production when ‘only a fraction of the season was written’.
Added to this is the $60 million Riot spent on promoting the first season, which Variety said was ‘eyebrow-raising’ for a company that is not distributing the show, and far exceeding what Netflix spent.
Despite this, the show's second season has been a massive success so far.
Season two joins season one in having a perfect 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as a 97 percent fan score.
Dylan Roth of The Observer said: “A video-game company invested a ludicrous amount of time and money on what could be considered a longform advertisement and wound up with one of the best animated series ever made.”
Arcane season two is streaming on Netflix now.
Michael Slavin