By now you’ve probably read several stories about Arcane’s reported $250 million budget. Showrunner Christian Linke says while that exact figure is incorrect, the budget is still “high”, and he thinks the risk was worth it.
“I think one of the hard things about the creative world is that if you do risky things or things that make people raise their eyebrows, if you stick the landing you’re a genius visionary,” Linke tells us. “If you don’t stick the landing, you’re an idiot. And there’s really no way around it.”
Arcane has certainly stuck the landing. Critics and fans alike love it, and it’s even getting some people to try League of Legends, the game it’s based on, for the first time. Those poor naive people, they don’t know what they’re getting themselves into.
“There was a book called Loon Shots,” Linke explains. “It talks about how easy it is to doubt, how cheap it is to doubt, because success is unlikely. If it fails, you’re right, and it was an easy investment for you. If you’re wrong after not believing in it, then, hey, you know, it was unlikely. It’s just cheap to doubt.”
If a studio gives a show a low budget and it fails, oh well, no harm done, write it off as a loss and claim the tax benefits. But sinking hundreds of millions into something is a lot more scary, even if it can create something incredible if spent wisely. Linke previously told us that the money went to securing top-quality voice actors and giving the animators time to create beautiful art.
“You expose yourself when you take big risks, and people will attack you,” Linke says. “People will question you. It’s not so much that I feel vindicated. It’s just that I think it is nice to see that we didn’t waste people’s money. I think that’s the only way to really put it. We’re not doing it to be megalomaniacs. We really just have always dreamt of the quality of animation we see in movies. We want to see that in serialized content and animation. It really only just started from there, because we love animation.”
The risk certainly paid off, as our Arcane season 2 review says its “Stunning animation and a bigger scope reaches thrilling new heights”.