France Télévisions greenlights SUPER-LUCHA from Vivement Lundi !
Skwigly
France Télévisions Jeunesse has greenlit the TV special SUPER-LUCHA produced by the French company Vivement Lundi !. The 26 minute action comedy for young audiences will be the first “Mexican manga in stop-motion”!
Ennio (10 yo) lives in Mexiquito, a small Mexican town set between desert plains and sun-drenched green hills. He’s from a long line of Super-Luchadores, masked vigilantes who fight the forces of evil. Accompanied by his best friends Pablo and Lili and a newcomer Helena, Ennio will discover that becoming a member of the Super-Lucha is no easy task!
SUPER-LUCHA will be directed by Goulwen Merret, a French animator born and raised in Mexico City until the age of 6. To develop the story, Merret drew upon the wrestling heroes of his childhood and co-wrote the original script with Suzie Le Texier. The original design draws upon the talents of Agnès Lecreux, creator and director of the stop-motion TV series DIMITRI which won an Industry Excellence Award for Character Design at Manchester Animation Festival 2019.
SUPER-LUCHA will be the first Mexican stop-motion manga ! In this film, Goulwen will combine three elements that have long inspired him: the narrative style borrowed from Japanese animation, the Mexican world of his childhood and its legends, and stop-motion inspired by hand-crafted pinatas.
-Mathieu Courtois (Producer, Vivement Lundi !)
Pitched at Cartoon Forum 2020, the project was commissioned by France Télévisions Jeunesse and followed a classical development process between the creative team and the broadcaster. Vivement Lundi ! raised development money from the CNC, the Breton regional fund Bretagne Cinéma, from the Breton local TVs TVR, Tébéo, TébéSud and France 3 Bretagne, from la Procirep and Angoa and from the EU fund Creative Europe.
French company Autour de Minuit is in charge of the international sales.
Image: Vivement Lundi !
Vivement Lundi ! is an Oscar nomimated French production company located in Rennes, Brittany. For 26 years, they produced and coproduced successful movies as MEMORABLE by Bruno Collet, THIS MAGNIFICENT CAKE! by Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels, FLEE by Jonas Power Rasmussen or NO DOGS OR ITALIANS ALLOWED by Alain Ughetto. 2025 will be a “grand cru” for Vivement Lundi ! with the release of the stop-motion omnibus feature TALES FROM THE MAGIC GARDEN that premiered in Berlinale, the selections of two new shorts – SIGNAL and ATOMIK TOUR – in the official competition of Annecy’s Festival and the streaming of DOUCE, the first Instagram native 2D series developed by the company. Jean-François Le Corre, Aurélie Angebault and Mathieu Courtois, the three producers, are now finishing the feature OLIVIA AND THE INVISIBLE EARTHQUAKE (coproduction between Spain, France, Belgium, Swiss and Chili) and the 52 x 11’ 2D series HARRISON AND ME coproduced with Superprod and France Télévisions.