Posted in: TV | Tagged: anime, art heist, Cat's Eyes, Cat’s Eye, City Hunter, comedy thriller, Lupin III, manga, TF1, Tsukasa Hojo

Cat's Eyes: Classic Tsukasa Hojo Manga Gets French Live-Action Series

Cat's Eyes is a French live-action series adaptation of the classic Tsukasa Hojo manga Cat's Eye, transposed to Paris with a French cast.

Cat's Eye, Tsukasa Hojo's hit 1980s manga series (with a plural on the "eye" the only change from his original title), is getting a French live-action television series from France TV network TF1. The network's distribution arm Newen Connect has been promoting Cat's Eyes to international buyers at the London TV Screenings market this week with a first clip of the series as it completes post-production.

Cat's Eyes stars Camille Lou, Constance Labbé, and Claire Romain as sisters Tam, Sylvia & Alexia Chamade, who run a Parisian café in the day but go out at night in catsuits to steal works of art and lead the police on a merry chase. The sisters plan a big heist to snatch artwork created by their missing father – hoping that it will lead them to solve the mystery of his disappearance 10 years earlier. But then there's the police chief and head of its organised crime unit, Quentin Chapuis (Mohamed Belkhir) – his girlfriend Tam is one of those thieves. The plot remains faithful to the original manga series but transposes the setting and characters to Paris rather than Tokyo. The eight-part action-packed TV show is directed by Alexandre Laurent from scripts by Michel Catz, Justine Kim-Gautier, Antonin Martin-Hilbert, Anne-Charlotte Kassab, Coline Dussaud, and Audrey Gagneux.

"'Cat's Eyes' is proving to be a huge success internationally," commented Leona Connell, chief commercial officer for TF1's global distribution arm Newen Connect. "The existing IP based on a manga by Tsukasa Hojo is known in many territories, also thanks to its animated version produced in the 1980s. In addition to securing Amazon as a co-producer for a second window in France and first window in Latin America and Japan, RTS Switzerland and RTL Belgium came in early to pre-buy the series," she underscored. "This is a testament to the quality of the script, the level of casting, and the ambitions of the series which Big Band Story has committed to deliver for TF1."

While Variety might condescendingly refer to Cat's Eye as a "cult" hit, the original manga was a massive hit worldwide,  translated into other languages and published in Europe, including France. It just never got an English version or published in the US or UK, which to Hollywood and its journalists typically means "out of sight is out of mind." It has spawned anime series, live-action series and movies, and even a recent anime movie crossover where the heroines met another classic manga/anime figure, the gentleman thief Lupin III in 2023. The manga sold in the millions in Japan and has remained in print since 1981, currently available in deluxe tankubon editions in Japan. It was creator Hojo's first big hit before he went on to create the even bigger hit series City Hunter, which is currently getting a live-action series from Netflix. Hojo still revisits Cat's Eye with a new short story every now and then in manga anthologies.

Cats Eyes will premiere on TF1 in France and probably Prime Video in the US. Who doesn't want to watch a show about glamourous French women in catsuits stealing art and running across the roofs of Paris?

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