Superprod Group’s Jérémie Fajner & Clément Calvet

Back when they were both at Gaumont Animation, Jérémie Fajner and Clément Calvet worked with the creatives behind Galactik Football, a French-Irish co-production that enamored kids from across the globe with its potent mix of football and science fiction. Almost two decades later, in a markedly different kids’ landscape, Fajner and Calvet are returning to the world of soccer with the same team, unveiling Heroic Football at Cartoon Forum this year. The new production skews older than Superprod’s past animation shows, eyeing a demo of 8 to 12, and is allowing the venture to flex its technical skills across its studio facilities. TV Kids caught up with Calvet, CEO, and Fajner, managing director, to learn more about the new series and their approach to navigating the complexities of the kids’ sector today.

TV KIDS: It’s been a while since the kids’ industry has seen a big football-themed animated show. I think the last one was Galactik Football. How did Heroic Football come about?
CALVET: We gathered with our friends Antoine Charreyron, Guillaume Mautalent and Sébastien Oursel, the director and main writers of Galactik Football. We had such a great time producing that show together. We said, let’s do a series together again! That’s how it started. We put some themes on the table, what we wanted to play with. Football and fantasy was a good combination. It’s two subjects that kids are fans of. They never have enough football, and they love fantasy. We had success mixing sci-fi and football in Galactik Football. We felt we could have bigger potential by mixing the fantasy world with football. We also thought we could bring in an extra level of quality because the technology has evolved a lot. There are things we could not do in the past. We gathered a team on the creative side and the writing side. We have a clear vision of the show and put a pilot together.
FAJNER: It has a very distinctive look. And we have the power to do everything in-house. We are a studio. That gives you much control and power over what you have on-screen. That’s exciting for the writers and Antoine, the director.
CALVET: It’s an important step for the company in terms of targeting—it will go up to 12 for sure. That’s something we’re not used to doing. We are just launching an animated feature film for adults, and we’re developing teen and adult animated series as well. This pilot is the first of its kind for us. We’re super excited to show it to the community. Our goal is not to do only one season. We’ll start with one season, but we have developed a deep arc that will sustain at least five seasons. We’d like to have one season for every event—the next World Cup, Euro, Copa América, etc. Every two years there’s a big event. We want to be ready to launch the show in parallel with those competitions.

TV KIDS: The world has changed so much since Galactik Football, from the business models to how kids consume content. How different was the development process this time around?
CALVET: It’s a full CGI show, which was not the case with Galactik Football—it was in 2D with small pieces of CGI. Here, we took it directly into full CGI and were inspired by many new visual trends and animation styles. We gathered talents like Florent Auguy, who worked on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. He brought a great touch to the artistic direction. There are some great women artists in the directing team, too.
FAJNER: We’re going for a very dynamic directing style—there is also a great combination of humor and action in the scripts. As producers, we’ve evolved as well. We’ve produced 15 shows since Galactik Football. Antoine has directed action series, including two seasons of Batwheels. All of that feeds us.
CALVET: We produce series and features. We don’t separate the two. We want our series to benefit from the high-end quality of the features. We want our features to be as efficient as possible production-wise. All this drives us to provide the best.

TV KIDS: Are you already thinking about gaming extensions, or will that come later?
FAJNER: The better the series is, the better it will translate into both media. We start by doing the series, attracting as many viewers as possible. And then translate to other media.
CALVET: Even though the market has evolved, we all need a great story and great characters first.
FAJNER: And emotional involvement.

TV KIDS: I recall Galactik Football being pitched as being boy-skewed; I imagine you can widen that demographic given how much more involved girls are in football these days.
CALVET: Look at the audience in the U.K. for the Women’s Euro and in Australia for the last World Cup, where stadiums were full. It’s getting bigger and bigger. We have mixed teams of girls and boys. The show needs to reflect real life and have diversity. Using fantasy as the theme, we can go even further with diversity.
FAJNER: And the lead character of Heroic Football is a girl!

TV KIDS: Let’s talk more about the studio and the pipeline and techniques you can work in.
CALVET: We wanted to develop a studio that would be able to produce every kind of animation, for series and also features, using the high-end technology we have developed, a USD [Universal Scene Description] pipeline (named FLOW) that is at the forefront of what you can do and be as efficient as possible in production. We use it to do all our projects, from preschool to adult.
FAJNER: The studio has about 600 to 700 seats. We are project-driven. Our projects are all different from one another. We’re finishing a series for Netflix, and we’re doing Batwheels for Warner Bros. Animation. Those were developed for them, and we’re doing the full series production. The directors are French; the storyboarders are French. The scripting is done in L.A., but everything else is done in France and Italy in our studios (in Paris, Angoulême—next to Bordeaux—and Milan). We just started the new Asterix CGI movie. That’s as big as a French CGI movie can be; it’s the biggest franchise here.
CALVET: We’re also launching our next 2D series, Harrison and Me, for France Télévisions. We can be agile, from simple shows to complex feature films, from 2D to CGI, for all targets. The goal is to push the limit each time so the team in the studio always gets excited.
FAJNER: We keep doing productions for majors like Warner Bros. Animation, Netflix, STUDIOCANAL, DreamWorks Animation and others, and our own shows. Some are original IPs we developed. We have a big in-house development team and develop at least three to four shows a year, original shows and adaptations of existing IP. This diversity excites us and takes us to the next level. We’re technology agnostic. What counts is what you have on the screen at the end of the day. We’re demanding with our tech teams and artists. This new pipeline we have and the technology we are using give creative freedom to the artist and bring more efficiency into the production. That’s key to what we want to do. Distinctive projects done in an efficient way. We do smaller budget series and we do premium budget series. We do them with the same heart.

TV KIDS: How do you see AI impacting the efficiency of production processes?
FAJNER: All the software we use in our production chain now integrates some AI components. As with any plug-in in any software, they bring some efficiencies and new abilities to work faster on repetitive tasks. We are integrating them into the production pipeline. But when it comes to creation, intention, vision and interpretation, nothing replaces a team of artists, a director and an actor doing the right stuff. There are industrial parts to what we do, so any tool helps, but the tool can also create more problems than solutions. You need a creative vision, first and foremost.

TV KIDS: How do you determine the best size for your development slate so you’re meeting varied market needs without stretching your capacity?
CALVET: We don’t give ourselves limits, except that we don’t want to develop a show that is the same as another one. We have a distribution arm, Superights, so we sell the shows we produce; we want to make sure it has a portfolio of diverse projects. Aside from that, we don’t see a limit. The limit is the capacity of the creativity of the team.
FAJNER: Some projects take time to mature. We can say, let’s stop this, but keep thinking about it. You need to have some projects in the back of your mind.
CALVET: And some projects are irresistible!

TV KIDS: It’s a challenging time for the business. What priorities are you focusing on for Superprod?
CALVET: We’re sticking to what we have decided to do from the first day of the company. We’re developing shows, telling the best stories possible, trying to work with the best talents and trying to go on evolving our tools. We keep the faith. The market is changing. Some times are more challenging than other times. At the end of the day, it’s all about producing great shows.
FAJNER: When times are difficult, you must be more creative than ever, more reliable than ever and true to your partners. That’s how we can find our way through these times.