Interest
Mysterious Cities of Gold New Season Details
posted on by Andrew Osmond
The web page of the French studio Blue Spirit Animation confirms that three episodes of the newest series of Mysterious Cities of Gold (designated 'Season 3') were premiered at the FIFEM 2016 festival at the end of February. An episode will also be shown at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival held in France in June. No television broadcast details are confirmed yet.
The FIFEM webpage mentions that the children travel to Japan in Season 3.
The new season is described by the FIFEM website as a French/Belgian co-production. The director is given as Jean-Luc François, who also directed the second season of Mysterious Cities of Gold.
The page for the Annecy screening in June adds that the series is scripted by Eric Marais with music by Noam Kaniel. The page also gives the following production partners: Blue Spirit Productions, Armelle Glorennec, OUFTIVI (RTBF) and Coralie Pastor.
The original Mysterious Cities of Gold (39 episodes) was a French-Japanese co-production, broadcast in Britain on children's BBC in the 1980s. In Japan, it was shown on NHK as Taiyo no Ko Esteban or Esteban, a Boy from the Sun. Set in the sixteenth century, it chronicles the adventures of three children, the boys Esteban and Tao and the girl Zia (plus the parrot Kokapetl), as they seek the legendary cities of gold in South America.
In 2012, a French-made second season (26 episodes) continued the story, taking the children to China. This series was made by Blue Spirit Animation in partnership with the French TV channel TF1 and Movie Plus. Movie Plus is an international producer-distributor founded by Jean Chalopin, who co-scripted the original Cities of Gold, as well as co-creating another French-Japanese animation, Ulysses 31. The production was in the French town of Angoulême.
The second series ended on a cliffhanger. In a contemporary press release for the spinoff game, Mysterious Cities of Gold: Secret Paths, director Jean-Luc François said that a further season had been greenlit by the French TV channel TF1, but that he was waiting to see the results of international broadcasts of the second season. At the same time, he also said that the children's journey would take them to Japan next.
