Report: 'League of Legends: War of Two Towers' is the most expensive animated series ever, costing around $250 million

The second season of "League of Legends: War of Two Cities" will be aired on November 9. According to a recent report by foreign media "Variety", this animation derived from the MOBA game "League of Legends" may be the most expensive animation series in history.

The report mentioned that the production cost of the first season (first 9 episodes) of "League of Legends: War of Two Cities" was "more than 80 million US dollars", and the production cost of the second season (also 9 episodes) was "close to" 100 million US dollars.

In addition, Riot, the developer of League of Legends, spent $60 million to promote the first season of Two Cities, bringing the total cost to nearly $250 million. Marc Merrill, co-founder and chief product officer of Riot, said in an interview: "We are very happy to spend this money to make a game that is worth players' time." But Merrill neither confirmed nor denied whether the reported $250 million figure was accurate.

As for the difference in costs between the two seasons, Variety reported that due to "the use of a labor-intensive production model, and the fact that only a small part of the second season's script was written before production began, delays in script delivery led to frequent cost overruns," further increasing development costs.

It is worth mentioning that the report also emphasized that Riot will basically not make any profit from the animated series of "League of Legends: The Battle of Two Cities". Even if Netflix paid a licensing fee of $3 million per episode for the global distribution rights of the animation, Riot's parent company Tencent will pay an additional $3 million for each episode broadcast in China, as well as sales of products such as "League of Legends" in-game crossover skins. The best case scenario is to break even.