While promoting his series Asterix & Obelix: The Battle of the Chieftains, actor and director Alain Chabat discusses another project even more ambitious than his cult film Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra.
Alain Chabat's ultra-ambitious project
April 30, 2025 will mark Alain Chabat's grand return to the world of Asterix by the legendary René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. Twenty-three years after the triumph of Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002), renowned as the best live-action adaptation of our Indomitable Gauls, the former Les Nuls returns to its first love with an animated series inspired by the seventh volume of the comic strip: Le Combat des Chefs. With this series, animated by the French studio TAT Productions, Netflix intends to strengthen its image as a patron of animation creators. Promised to be a great success on the platform with the red N, Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra Obélix: The Battle of the Chiefs is also an opportunity for Alain Chabat fans to hear him talk about comics, which is always a great pleasure!
Indeed, before becoming a television star thanks to the collective Les Nuls and then of French comedy with films like La Cité de la Peur, Didier and Astérix & Obelix: Mission Cléopâtre, Alain Chabat wanted to become a comic book artist. The man who recently won the César Award for Best Actor for L'Amour Ouf by Gilles Lellouche has never hidden this passion. Moreover, Alain Chabat has not been content with adapting the universe of René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, as he has also adapted one of the most famous characters of another of his idols: André Franquin, for the big screen, with On the Road to the Marsupilami (2012). Moreover, Alain Chabat is still considering adapting another classic by the famous Belgian cartoonist, often considered the greatest genius of Franco-Belgian comics. Recently interviewed by Konbini, the director of the series Asterix & Obelix: The Battle of the Chiefs thus mentioned his desire to make an adaptation of the diptych Z like Zorglub and The Shadow of Z, volumes 15 and 16 of The Adventures of Spirou and Fantasio. A terribly ambitious project that he fears he will never be able to realize...
Frankly, it would be a great thing. But the film I have in my head when I think about it, it's too expensive. It's much too expensive. I think it would have cost almost more than Mission and Cleopatra. And I don't know what Spirou looks like live... I, Fantasio, I see a little more. But Zorglub is great, he's a great character! An extraordinary villain! There's a crazy show that almost looks like André Hunebelle's Fantomas or Austin Powers, with a kind of exaggerated pop, plus you have the Marsupilami, a little squirrel, the jungle, flying cars, Zorglhommes, people who talk backwards, people who are paralyzed by Zorglonde. I feel like it's a film that could be very easy to miss, but in my head it's great.
Anyway, fans of Franco-Belgian comics, and more specifically The Adventures of Spirou and Fantasio by André Franquin, can only hope that Alain Chabat manages to find the necessary funding and the right tone to adapt Z comme Zorglub and its sequel, as this comic has left its mark on French-speaking science fiction with its imagination and its ever-exquisite humor. If you liked this article, don't hesitate to discover our fifteen favorite Franco-Belgian comics!
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