With the resounding success ofArcane on Netflix, Riot Games dreamed of revolutionizing the entertainment industry. However, the studio's ambitions clashed with the realities of Hollywood production, causing a financial hemorrhage.
In the world of video games, the American company Riot Games has established an empire with League of Legendsa battle arena game free-to-play which attracts millions of players each month, and generates billions of dollars in revenue. With its dedicated fan base (and the reputation of the worst fan base in the world of video games), the publisher launched an ambitious project in 2019: conquer Hollywood and translate its universe into animated series and films.
With the first season ofArcanereleased on Netflix in 2021, Riot seemed to have found a winning formula. Awarded four Emmy Awards, the series enjoyed worldwide success and confirmed Riot's ambition to become a major player in television entertainment.
However, despite the announcements and a production team reinforced by experts from Disney and Netflix, Arcane remains Riot's only cinematic success to this day. Season 2 ofArcane announced itself with a warlike trailer. The launch of this sequel is scheduled for November 9, but the second season will be the last, because between astronomical costs and aborted projects, Riot's journey to Hollywood resembles Sisyphus' torment.
Arcane Fire
In a long investigation, Variety revealed thatArcane had cost a whopping $250 million for 18 episodes (9 episodes for each season). In doing so, it is one of the most expensive series broadcast on Netflix. With ArcaneRiot has proven that it knows how to captivate its audience outside of the video game world, and expand its fan base beyond the confines of PC screens.
Despite this success, Riot's ambition also revealed its own limitations in the film industry. In reality, the design ofArcane was very chaotic, and if Riot wanted to create large-scale works, it lacked specific know-how and resources. Strategic errors have thus punctuated the company's journey, causing it to lose enormous amounts of liquidity.
For example, as of 2020, Riot was in negotiations with the Russo brothers (directors ofAvengers Endgame) for the creation of a feature film League of Legends. Due to a lack of clarity in the creative vision and agreement on the direction to take, the project collapsed, causing the company to lose five million dollars.
Arcana, crimes and botany
Faced with a succession of bad decisions and constraints, Riot revised its Hollywood ambitions. Marc Merrill, co-founder of Riot, acknowledged that the studio faced a long phase of learning the ropes of the film industry: “We had to recalibrate our expectations and adjust our goals“, he explained.
Ignorant of the Hollywood system, Riot contracted with various service providers only to cancel the contracts, committed enormous sums to proto-projects that were abandoned, and ended up with the reputation of yes man who signed checks with all his might.
Between 2019 and 2020 (while the production ofArcane was already launched), under the leadership of co-CEO Nicolo Laurent, who wanted to make Riot “the entertainment business of the 21st century”, the firm embarked on all-out recruitment to correct the situation. She sought out executives from Paramount, Disney, Paramount, HBO Max and Netflix (by hiring Shauna Spenley, who was vice-president of marketing for the red N brand) to bring the universe of League of Legends on the screens.
The department dedicated to cinema had a credo of telling quality stories, as faithful as possible to the license. But these good intentions came up against a lack of internal support and dissension between the teams. Internally, Nicolo Laurent's desire to bring League of Legends on the screens was criticized, and the boards of directors were more than tense.
Some of the company's thinking heads, as well as some of the employees and a large number of fans, did not want to see League of Legends elsewhere than in the video game industry.
Still according to the story of Varietythe climate deteriorated significantly internally and became more and more degraded as film or series projects were postponed or canceled. Yet Nicolo Laurent held his ground, but despite the monstrous expenses of his department for the creation ofArcaneand the success of the series, in the corridors of Riot, the situation has only gotten worse.
Injustice League
The entire department headed by Nicolo Laurent was in turmoil, criticized for its poor management of its production budgets, and for wanting to go too far in the development of series and films. Nicolo Laurent ended up throwing in the towel in May 2023, and in 2024 it was the director of the entertainment department, Shauna Spenley, who left the company.
Nicolo Laurent was replaced by Dylan Jadeja, who has not declared himself hostile to small screen productions, but who is known to want refocus Riot's projects especially around video games.
As a final snub, Marc Merrill declared that there has never been any significant strategic change at Riot, and that Nicolo Laurent's message that the firm could become the “21st century entertainment company” would have been misunderstood: “Nicolo used the phrase quite broadly when talking about the future and often associated it with… with the games at the center” Merrill said.
According to the sources of Variety, Arcane's production and marketing expenses reportedly total more than $300 million. With such a cost, making money Arcane remains a major challenge. To make up the deficit, the company is banking on the sale of derivative products and the continued enthusiasm of fans, which help to keep the brand at the forefront of the video game scene.
Currently, like many video game giants, Riot has announced numerous layoffs. In 2024, 530 people were fired, or 11% of the firm's total workforce. In this context, and while the company has reaffirmed that video games are its top priority, it is difficult to know if other film or series projects will see the light of day. A priori, an animated film League of Legends would be in gestation with the co-creator ofArcaneChristian Linke, but the project seems to have stalled for months.
Despite chaotic development and an exorbitant cost, season 2 ofArcane has been completed, and if it was initially planned to be broadcast in 2023, it will finally be put online on Netflix in three parts of three episodes: November 9, 16 and 23, 2024. Riot claimed it would never have a sequel.
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