French Animation ‘Submarine Jim’ Swims To Annecy With Hopes Of Echoing The Cult Success Of ‘Space Goofs’

Welcome to Global Breakouts, Deadline’s strand in which, each fortnight, we shine a spotlight on the TV shows and films killing it in their local territories. The industry is as globalized as it’s ever been, but breakout hits are appearing in pockets of the world all the time and it can be hard to keep track… So, we’re going to do the hard work for you.

We’re reporting from the Annecy International Animation Film Festival this week and so it only felt right to highlight some fare heading to the lakeside in the south of France. Xilam Animation’s Submarine Jim has plenty of heart mixed in with more than a dash of silly humor and might just be the next cult hit. Xilam has already struck a slew of deals and will be hoping to find a U.S. buyer over the coming weeks. For now, its creator and producer tell us how Submarine Jim came about and why it is similar yet contrasts with cult 1990s hit Space Goofs.

Name: Submarine Jim

Country: France

Producers: Xilam Animation

Distributor: Xilam Animation

Network: Various

For fans of: Space Goofs, SpongeBob SquarePants

Dozens of budding animators are on the ground at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival this week and will be asking wise elders how to come up with the next big thing.

This question dominated the thinking of top French animator Frédéric Martin, a long-time Xilam Animation collaborator, as he wrapped up work on pre-school series Oggy Oggy. He decided he wanted to return to a world of snappy dialogue and come up with a cult sitcom that could echo the success of late-90s cult hit Space Goofs, which sold to Fox.

“I wanted an animated sitcom in a fun location with a closed environment, so made a list of all the places I could go to and thought to myself that I’d never seen a sitcom in a submarine,” he tells Deadline of Submarine Jim, which is one of Xilam’s hot properties at Annecy. “Once we’d settled on a submarine, everything about its originality and specificity fell into place.”

Martin achieved his closed environment as he rapidly created an ecosystem of fun characters that he hopes have inspired the next cult hit. Collected together on the vessel are a hilarious group of funky underwater friends led by the titular Jim, a naive young dolphin voiced by American star Lucas Grabeel. He is joined by a “small society of” sardines, urchins, sailors and many more, all of whom seek their place and worth on the sub.

Martin relished coming up with draft drawings of the submarine, a vehicle that he says comes with an element of fun, and notes that by animation standards the development process whizzed through the water. “The location really chose the characters,” he explains.

Xilam boss Marc du Pontavice says he “found the concept hilarious” when first pitched by Martin, with whom he had worked on hits like Oggy Oggy. “This taps into what Xilam loves to do, which is slapstick and crazy comedy, but with something that bit more innovative that Fred is capable of inventing,” he says. “It is sitcom-y and more character driven, and there is lots of craziness.”

Notably, the show is created by a French animator in a different language, English, which du Pontavice says is testament to the “universal” nature of Submarine Jim. This allowed the team to cast the net wide looking for British voice actors. In the end, they went with an American lead in Grabeel, best known for his role as Ryan Evans in the High School Musical franchise. While having an American somewhat complicated things given that recording took place in London, du Pontavice says it was well worth it, with Grabeel providing “pure comedy.”

Submarine Jim is now well on the way to repaying Xilam for keeping the faith and developing in house.

The first season pre-sold to France Télévisions (it premieres in France this week) and Germay’s Super RTL, and Xilam has struck a slew of other deals including for the BBC in the UK and Cartoon Network in Latin America and South East Asia.

Xilam says the show is rating well in the territories in which it has already launched, although we weren’t able to get independent ratings data. Du Pontavice says there is certainly a “desire” from some broadcasters for a second season, while talks over a sale to the U.S. are “ongoing.”

He thinks Submarine Jim can achieve similar cult status to Space Goofs, a fun, crude Xilam series from the late 1990s about five extraterrestrials from a fictitious planet that sold to Fox and laid the platform for popular Ubisoft game Stupid Invaders.

“I hope we can be as successful as Space Goofs,” says Martin, who was a huge fan as a kid. “This felt really close to the original Space Goofs, which is totally fine with me as it’s such a strong concept. In Space Goofs they are like fish out of water and in Submarine Jim they are literally fish out of water.”

For du Pontavice, however, there is a bit of a difference in that Submarine Jim feels more “inspiring for kids,” adding: “It’s about a kid trying to behave and deserve his title of Captain but having a hard time coping with the obligation. That’s very relatable.”

Animation in “such a big crisis”

This moral takeaway feeds into Xilam’s two rules for its fare, du Pontavice explains, the first being that “parents and kids must enjoy watching together” and the second that “kids should take something away from the storytelling.”

He therefore celebrates the originality of Martin’s Submarine Jim proposition. With Annecy rapidly getting into gear, he nevertheless fears for an industry that is doing better than ever at the global box office yet faces stiff competition from the likes of YouTube.

“There is so much euphoria in terms of animation at Annecy, but the market is not booming, it is getting into such a big crisis,” he explains. “Animation is making up 27% of the global box office and more than 50% of the audience on Netflix are watching it, so the crisis isn’t demand but monetization. I don’t want to point to anyone responsible, but I feel like YouTube is killing us because those revenues [from YouTube for our shows] don’t provide the kind of money we need to create content.”

Du Pontavice, for what it’s worth, is staying calm and allowing the Annecy “euphoria” to wash over him. He notes that his career has seen three such “crises” hit the animation sector, and the industry has always found its way through.

“What I’m sure of is that I’m surrounded by artists with amazing ideas for all kinds of audiences,” adds Martin. “We are not running out of ideas.”

Annecy finishes on Saturday.