Riot Games Invests in Animation Studio Fortiche Production

Riot Games has announced that it has invested in one of its long-time partners, Paris-based animation studio Fortiche Production. The animation studio was responsible for producing one of the most popular shows on Netflix last year - the League of Legends-based series, Arcane. Under the terms of the investment, which was closed out earlier in 2022, Riot now holds a significant non-controlling stake in Fortiche Production. Additionally, Riot’s Chief Content Officer Brian Wright and Director of Corporate Development Brendan Mulligan have joined the studio’s board of directors.

Riot’s CEO Nicolo Laurent, in a press release, said, “Fortiche has been an integral partner for a long time, but this agreement ensures we’ll be working closely for decades to come.” He added that Riot holds a high bar for every company that it works with and Fortiche has exemplified player experience first. “In working with Fortiche, we collaborate to push the boundaries of what’s possible and raise expectations for how games can be represented in media. As proud as we are of Arcane, we know the best is yet to come,” he said.

Notable Collaborations between Riot Games and Fortiche Production

Fortiche and Riot worked closely during the early stages of Arcane, since its ideation and storyboard development stages. The studio has been a vital partner throughout the development of the show and is now collaborating with Riot for the second season of Arcane.

Apart from Arcane, the two entities have collaborated on other music videos for League of Legends. The older collaborations include the following:

• Music video “Get Jinxed,” which was released for the announcement of Jinx in the game

• “Warriors” featuring Imagine Dragons which was released for Worlds 2014

• “Enemy” music video featuring Imagine Dragons and JID

• “Seconds” which was a cinematic released for Ekko

• “POP/STARS” featuring Madison Beer, (G)I-DLE, Jaira burns for the virtual k-pop band of League of Legends, K/DA

• “Rise” which was the Worlds anthem for 2018 featuring Glitch Mob, Mako, and The Word Alive

Co-founders of Fortiche Production Pascal Charrue, Jérôme Combe, and Arnaud Delord said that Fortiche’s collaboration with Riot on multiple instances has pushed it to become a new major player in the internal animation scene. “Riot Games, by trusting us, has given us the means to achieve our common ambitions and has shown that it is possible to offer new content that can reach a large audience. In 2023, we will celebrate ten years of collaboration: there is no better way to symbolize the trust and ambitions of our two companies than this association!” they added in the press release.

Just this week Arcane dominated the Annie Awards by winning nine trophies in each of the categories it was nominated for. According to Riot, Arcane is now the most-nominated and awarded TV show of the year with its Annie Awards including Best TV/Media General Audience, Best Character Design, and Best Writing. Additionally, “Enemy” by Imagine Dragons from the original sound track reached over 1 billion streams and hit #1 on the Billboard rock chart.

Fortiche Production and Riot are also collaborating on a number of to-be-announced projects, said the release. Riot has a lot of cool projects lined up in the coming years. It already announced an esports’ team based sitcom called Players. As per an earlier announcement, Season 2 of Arcane is under production but its release date has not yet been confirmed.

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