We recently received another small update from Sophie Decroisette regarding the progress of the new series. As we know, it is slow. This article will be a bit other from what we usually publish, as we will try to explain what may be behind this slow progress.
First, a quick course in copyright law, as it will be handy later on. If anyone has had the opportunity or the need to delve into the topic, they probably know this is complicated, and the more authors are involved, the more difficult it is to research. The easiest it looks with the authors of the books, however in the case of such creations as series it affects quite a large group of people. Code Lyoko is a French production, therefore French regulations apply to it. The authority to have these basic rights have authors of the script on which series were created, adaptation authors (In this case it is about graphic design), authors of the dialogues, authors of the music used in the production and its director. The rights expires 70 years after the death of the last of the entitled person. This system is used in many countries.
To this point everything seems to by clear. But… in France there is something called “droit moral”, which are immaterial rights. And this is where things start to be difficult. According to the French law, the author has his his right to protect his dignity and that of his works. Five rules are specified:
- The right of the distribute: the author decides when his works are available for the public.
- The right of the attribution: the author may demand that the information about his authorship is crystal clear.
- The right to respect the integrity of his work: the author may stipulate ban of interference with his work.
- The right of withdrawal: the author may at any moment demand withdraw from distributing and reproduction of his work.
- The right to protect his reputation.
In contrast to property rights, immaterial rights cannot be waived. However, they are not automatically applied, nor is there a requirement for their automatic application. In case of conflict between material and immaterial rights, the matter shall be decided by the court. An often mentioned example situation is when an architect proposes the project of some building, after which the client who has become the owner of the project wants to modify it. That’s when a lawsuit can occur.
After this law example, let’s see how the situation looks on our ground. The property rights first were held by Antefilms company. When they merged with France Animation, Moonscoop was created, which took over everything. The things got complicated when Moonscoop went bankrupt. All its assets along with the production catalogue were bought by Daragaud, which forwarded them to its sister company dealing with television productions – Mediatoon. Due to some peculiarity of the French law they could not immediately acquire rights to Code Lyoko: Evolution, this happend in 2020, while the “drawn” Code Lyoko brand could be used some about 4 years earlier. Either way: today the rights to the brand have Mediatoon, as well as the broadcast licensing rights. The latter are not total, however as, in France the television rights still has France Televisions and Lagardère Group, the broadcaster of Canal J – these companies as the co-producers of the series have TV exclusivity. Mediatoon in France, in turn, can sell the series to the VOD services.
With the immaterial rights the enumeration is longer. For each episode, both in series 1-4 and the Evolution, they belong to the script writers, screenwriters, animators and music creators. As we know, there was no situation in which on every episode worked exactly the same people. These surnames changed, because of this, some have rights for few dozens of episodes, while others have just a few. For a example: Sophie Decroisette as the screenwriter have immaterial rights to 26 episodes of seasons 1-4 and two episodes to Evolution.
The rights to graphic bible has Tania Palumbo and Thomas Romain, while for literary bible in addition to these two, also Carlo de Boutiny, but due to his death in 2018 they passed to his heirs (but, as we remember from earlier piece: they are no applied automatically).
In case of literal bible of Evolution, which was never used in it’s original form, immaterial rights are held by it’s author: Sophie Decroisette.
We have known since may that there is ongoing work on contract issues. Recently we learned that the matter is slowly moving forward, but it is still being sorted out. On this point of this article, I will point out one thing: what will come next in further sentences are our supposed reasons for the current state. We predict this on base of known facts, including those mentioned earlier. This does not mean they are the only possible and official reasons, because there may be another not revealed to the public for various reasons. These are just a predictions.
So it can be assumed the case is dragging on bit, because someone, who counts on list of people having the immaterial rights, found about continuation plans and may have objected or made a suggestion about use of what he created. We are not sure who could have done this, but with fair amount of probability we can conclude that two people are unlikely to have done it. They are Sophie Decroisette and Jerome Mouscadet, as they are involved in the new project and it would be not likely in their interest, especially when it comes, for example, the Evolution literary bible, the rights to which accrue only to Decroisette.
There is also the possibility here that the immaterial rights could be used by the developers of Evolution, if only out of concern that the new production will decanonize what they did in 2012, which has already been announced.
Another supposed reason may lie with Mediatoon, the brand rights holder. It’s quite likely that economic analysis is underway there – will a new series of a production whose last fully animated season was released more than 15 years ago, and the last series in general a decade ago, be as successful as before? This is not a question with a clear answer at this point, because it depends on many factors, which is a topic for a separate text. On the other hand, the fact is that the Code Lyoko brand still lives on in the minds of many fans. Until quite recently, official channels on YT were releasing compilations of episodes. In many countries, the series can be watched on VOD portals (For example, Amazon has proven to be better than Netflix, as it still holds the sharing rights), and there are also places where CL is still available on TV. Quite recently, a new Mexican dubbing was even recorded, and it’s worth remembering that Latin America is one of the areas where Lyoko has been received well.
Nonetheless, Mediatoon may be thinking purely economically here, wondering whether the current situation, where virtually zero costs in brand investment are yielding profits, is better than potentially making more money while increasing risk.
It could also be that the reason for some prolongation of the whole process is simply laziness, or to put it more officially – clerical obstruction. Earlier it was said about the delay in obtaining the rights to Evolution. It is possible that a similar situation exists here.
One can also consider a variant in which both the Decroisette/Mouscadet duo and Mediatoon are unwilling or unable to announce details now, in order to be able to provide full information when everything is certain and it is known when plans can be implemented. Until then, fans will probably still ask about it from time to time, which is also a sign that people care about this continuation.
Regardless of how the situation develops, we will keep an eye on it and report on further developments.
~ Jeremy_96, 10th December 2024.