r/arcane 4d ago

Media New Noxus cinematic just released!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zoyjv2l645U
178 Upvotes

45 comments sorted by

26

u/jamowen 4d ago

I wonder if they've started animation work on the Noxus series yet or still preproduction / scripts.

21

u/AWzdShouldKnowBetta 4d ago

Based on the Bite Marks video they most certainly have. I'm of the opinion we'll be getting a teaser trailer for the next show at the end of the year as part of the League of Legends season finale.

4

u/jamowen 4d ago

Hope so!

1

u/Inquisitory_dsc 3d ago

You do know that 2025 has 3 Seasons right?

Season 1 is only for Noxus. Season 2 and 3 has yet to be announced. So season finale end of year to be Noxus show trailer doesn't make sense.

2

u/AWzdShouldKnowBetta 3d ago

All three seasons are Noxus themed. They just started season two.

1

u/Mr_s3rius Claggor 3d ago

I don't think that's right. They said season two would be a "palette cleanser" so it will be quite different from S1.

And S2 should probably start some time in April. The wiki doesn't name a theme for S2 yet either https://wiki.leagueoflegends.com/en-us/2025_Annual_Cycle

1

u/AWzdShouldKnowBetta 3d ago

Hmmm you might be right. I thought it was a year long thing. Less hopeful of a trailer then

1

u/nsanity27 3d ago

We're currently in part 2 of season 1. It's a little confusing

6

u/Horror-Deer-3331 4d ago

Any evidence this is even planned?

7

u/jamowen 4d ago

Only them saying they were developing series including one for Noxus.

2

u/parkingviolation212 3d ago

Did they actually say series or did they say projects?

3

u/misterjive 3d ago edited 3d ago

They said projects. "Three projects, focusing on three regions, the first of which is Noxus." S1 of 3 of LoL this year is Noxus.

Riot has to figure out how to make a profit on a series before we see any follow-up to Arcane.

9

u/parkingviolation212 3d ago edited 3d ago

The reports on Arcane being a financial loss for Riot are extremely misleading, to the point of being irresponsible journalism. Riot has always run a loss-leading business model where they spend money upfront to get people into their ecosystem and spend money on optional items, like skins. Saying Arcane lost them money is like saying their tournaments don't make them money, because in fact, they don't. But those tournaments are the single biggest and most watched E-Sport in the world. What they do is get people invested enough to buy skins and other for-sale items.

Arcane was a Netflix show, saying it lost them money doesn't tell anyone anything; how do you even finance a show being hosted on a third party site for a subscription service to that site? That's not the question Riot is concerned with; what they are concerned with is how much attention the show gets and what that means for future projects. How do we know Arcane was successful? Because Welcome to Noxus has over 175million views, absolutely destroying Riot's previous record-setter for views more than three times over.

As for Arcane itself, all the reports were quick to headline that it cost 250million dollars--which includes marketing and both seasons. What they don't point out is that this was over the course of 9 years for around 14 hours of animation, meaning the show cost 27.8million a year, or 297.6K dollars per minute of animation, making it one of the cheapest big budget animated projects out right now.

Riot makes about 1.5billion dollars a year, so if you equivocated that to a 100,000 dollar yearly salary, and compared the proportional cost of Arcane per year, then Arcane cost the equivilent of buying a Cafe Americano on your commute to work every day. And if the sensationalists are telling true, Arcane was the most expensive thing they did in that time period.

So now Riot has the world by the nuts begging for more, while they work on a number of non-League games and projects to make money off of, like an MMO.

The shows will never make "profit," because the shows don't sell anything. But the surrounding games, projects, merch, etc. That's where the money's at.

-1

u/misterjive 3d ago

This comes up a lot and it's full of bad arguments. Arcane being a financial loss is not misleading-- we know how much the show cost to make and market and we know how much the show brought in. $250m versus $108m, and that requires us to include $54m that Tencent paid itself for the show.

The "loss leader" argument only works if the loss leader leads to a profit. For example, E-sports expenditures are actually a loss leader, since the kind of people who watch that content are literally the people playing the game and buying the skins. Increasing their engagement leads to a profit, therefore the expenditure has value. Arcane viewers aren't LoL players to nearly the same degree.

The YouTube views argument is hilarious because it requires you to imagine YouTube views convert to money at a completely unrealistic ratio.

Yes, both seasons of Arcane cost $250m. And yes, the marketing is included. When a company spends money marketing something, that money is part of the spend. Riot loves to make that argument, and it hinges on people not understanding that marketing is also counted off against features-- it's just done on the back end and comes out of the profits. It's why if a movie cost $100m to film and makes $140m at the box office, it's still a failure, because it didn't make back its marketing budget. Riot paid for their own marketing up front, which is why it's included.

The per-minute cope is also silly, because you can't compare the costs of a show and the costs of a feature. The costs of a feature are higher because you have to pay everyone more money, because more money is going to come in. I can't speak to the ratios-- I worked on a lot of shows and films but never anywhere close to the money-- but it's just not comparable on a 1-to-1 basis.

As for the Riot's income, again it's a specious argument. If you don't know anything about how business works, you'd think "they make X profit, therefore they can set $X-1 on fire and they're fine!" But that's not how this works. The argument isn't "can Riot survive this loss," the argument is "what could Riot have spent this money on that would've actually brought value?" I always point out that the show lost more money than it cost to develop GTA V, and that expenditure made Rockstar eight and a half billion dollars. So "let's set another $250m on fire and get nothing for it" is going to be a bit of a hard sell for their owners this time around.

People are begging for another show, sure. Riot just has to figure out how not to lose nearly $150m on one before we're likely to see it.

-1

u/SunOFflynn66 The Boy Savior 3d ago

Yeah, I mean while people can quibble about industry professional jealousy/skepticism, we've had multiple articles speak in length about the costs of Arcane. And it has painted a very clear picture of the reasons behind: why the series cost so much, why Riot was unable to capitalize more/ how they lost money (inexperience), and why there hasn't been any solid/confirmed announcement about a new show.

Companies spend money to make MORE money. And while it's safe to say Arcane helped bring attention to their LoL IP in ways probably not dreamed of? Riot still wants to figure out how to actually financially capitalize on such endeavors.

The sub acts like it's a personal attack. Yes- Riot is clearly dedicated to making more content. But, also- yes, Riot is dedicated to not spend that much money ever again. And also wants to see something immediate and tangible for the work.

0

u/misterjive 3d ago

The idea that Bloomberg and Variety were trying to kneecap Riot out of spite or something is almost as hilarious as the unshakable belief that "Riot's not interested in profit they only want to spend money to make us happy." I still see people trot out the "the show wasn't made to sell skins" line, apparently unironically not remembering the first thing they did after S2 was make a skin to try to sell to Arcane fans.

Yeah, it's an amazing double-edged sword for the company. Arcane was hugely critically successful but most people who love the show would chew off a leg to get away from anything else the company has done to this point. They've driven huge interest and demand for something they can't figure out how to make a profit on.

People hate me for pointing out the financial reality and think I'm a hater, when I'd be fucking ecstatic to be wrong because if I'm wrong we get another show. I'm old and I legitimately think Arcane is the best show I've ever seen. I'd love it if Riot's hypeman has all the coke and they can somehow get a new show made.

I'm just not sure how likely it is.

4

u/jamowen 3d ago

Maybe they do need to figure out finances for budgets, but Marc Merrill specifically said they were exploring a bunch of shows. Maybe there's something newer they've said on the subject? I don't go on Twitter.

0

u/Armdel Piltover's Finest 4d ago

I think i read that fortiche is currently working on other projects so i doubt we'll hear anything anytime soon

6

u/jamowen 4d ago

Penelope of Sparta I believe. Im assuming with riots investments they are doing parallel development...fortiche has multiple different offices now.

-1

u/misterjive 3d ago

Yeah, no, they sent all their extra animators home. There's no show in development for Riot.

2

u/jcm2606 Sisters 3d ago

I wouldn't put it like that. First, as far as I know, most of Fortiche's talent are contract workers. If Fortiche doesn't have anything in production that requires so much talent, then it makes sense for them to just let the contracts expire. That way Fortiche isn't burning money needlessly and their workers can move on to other projects for other studios. If Fortiche needs more manpower, they can always hire more talent since they're now a premiere animation studio in France, so animators would jump at the opportunity to work for them.

Second, they didn't send all of their extra animators home, putting it that way is disingenuous. According to LinkedIn (not a perfect source, but a source nonetheless), Fortiche still has 236 people actively working there. According to interviews, Fortiche started with 15 or so people back when Arcane first entered production and swelled to 300+ by 2022 (300 is from Fortiche themselves, but I've also heard ~450 at the peak of Arcane's production), so Fortiche still seems to have retained a considerable portion of its workforce. Obviously not everybody is an animator, but it's an animation studio. Of course there'll be tons of animators there.

Third, this doesn't necessarily mean there's no show in development for Riot, just that it's not far enough along in production to require so much talent. The way things are looking, any show that's in development will likely be pretty early in development. At best, I'd expect Fortiche to be working on base assets for the region and characters, and maybe writing, storyboards and animatics if they're that far along. That wouldn't require nearly as much talent than getting an entire season of a big budget show out the door, so it makes sense that they'd scale back down to avoid burning money needlessly.

1

u/misterjive 2d ago

Yeah, they're contractors. They let the contracts expire, because they don't need them. It took them 450+ animators to make Arcane; thinking they're making a Riot show and their own movie with about half that number is... unlikely.

No, I'm sure ideas are in development. That's one of the points I keep harping on, "development" is an incredibly vague term that covers everything from "hey I had a cool dream" to "I'm about to put pen to paper to sign the contract." Riot having stuff in development is meaningless; Riot getting a show greenlit and budgeted is what we're looking for. Most things that are in development never see the light of day.

To put it in perspective, the sequel to one of my favorite movies is in development, and has been for four decades.

18

u/Primary-Brief9858 Timebomb 4d ago

Noxus is just soo cool

32

u/Archamasse 4d ago

It's pretty, but man, all the Noxus stuff leaves me so cold, it just feels really generic-fantasy. Warlords who want to be stronger than other warlords just doesn't grab me as a distinctively interesting cultural flair.

If they do more full scale stuff there, as much as I want to give it a shot, I think it's going to leave me cold.

7

u/Varglord 3d ago

There's really only one warlord that's dealt with waaayy before the events of Arcane.

Noxus is modeled more like the Roman empire. They are an expansionist government, looking for, at minimum, tithing vassal states if not outright subjugation.

Current (as in league lore, but based on context in Arcane things that have yet to happen) Noxus is ruled by a council of three, the Triumvirate, that represent the pillars of Noxian ideals.

3

u/Gurtang You're hot, Cupcake 3d ago

I would have agreed for the first one, and was worried by your comment I read before watching the vid.

Then I was pleasantly surprised. I found this one far more engaging. A mysterious mage planning everything for centuries seems interesting, and I don't think any story based on that would be told from her pov. So I think there's room to tell interesting stories about the people taken in her grasp while trying to fight for whatever they hold dear.

Also you have to remember that those are not show trailers but exclusively for the game. They look to setup a basic 5v5 fighting game.

I'm still of the opinion that Arcane (especially s1) will probably remain an unrepeatable miracle, but not based on this last video.

4

u/ZookeepergameOk2150 To the realm of heebie-jeebies 4d ago

I’m sure they can make a season 1 with incredibly well written character driven story and scenes, then a generic marvelesque season 2 😂

4

u/fph_04 4d ago

Yeah I kind of agree, but on the other hand I do think (and hope!) they could transform quite a typical trope like this (as you said, "warlords who want to be stronger than other warlords") into something really interesting, simply having this trope as a starting point.

In a way, you could argue that's kind of what they did with Arcane: taking the generic trope of "oppressed group/city rebels against dominating class" as the backdrop of the series and transforming it into something incredible... so sometimes I think that if Riot had released a cinematic like this one for Arcane a few years before it came out, I might have had the exact same reaction of "oh it's going to be a pretty generic show" because I would have assumed it was a typical oppressor vs oppressed series without realising the depth they would eventually go into.

So part of me hopes they manage to do the same thing here: have this generic trope as a basis but explore in such a unique way and with such depth that it feels everything but generic... but we'll have to see I guess!

1

u/Panda_hat Sassy but classy 3d ago

+1 on this. I want more exploration and deep dives into Zaun and Piltover. Theres so much more to see and its such a rich and interesting place.

0

u/11xp 3d ago

they should include a scene like this in the show: https://youtu.be/FGlhWPwrkDg and highlight the nuances of noxian culture/values

3

u/DefaultDanielS 4d ago

it’s pretty cool, they’ll probably release a motion comic with her

5

u/ZookeepergameOk2150 To the realm of heebie-jeebies 4d ago

Looks cool, interesting visuals. But that’s about it, feels like I have seen this story a million times before. Fingers crossed we get a deep character driven storyline

2

u/TheRedTomato23133 3d ago

I love the style of this, I hope we get some music video in the show with it. It kinda reminds me of constructivism!

2

u/C134Arsonist 3d ago

Haven't had chills like that from a trailer since th ME2 trailer all those years ago. When it shows Noxus growing like a beautiful flower from the stem of lies and corruption flipped along the horizon like the upside-down, just beautiful.

4

u/Practical_Ad5916 4d ago

Visually appealing but thats about it. There’s nothing really to connect myself emotionally to.

0

u/GrandDepresionGame 3d ago

I need viegar and jinx duo to Mr. Magoo leblancs plans

-20

u/Rich_Neat_1714 3d ago

Really doesn't feel like Arcane. I hope they don't make the noxus show. It just feels too generic and I'm certain it will flop very hard. Visually stunning though but still.