2024 - Le Collège noir (ADN): “This animated series is going to be quite unique in France”

The French studio La Cachette, behind the animation series Love, Death & Robots, Primal or Star Wars: Visionstransports us to another mythical and marvelous territory: Cantal.

After prehistory and a distant galaxy, the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes department is the setting for the future series The Black Collegescheduled for October 2023 on the DNA streaming platform.

A French, original and ambitious production, including Digital was able to get an exclusive preview. Encounter.

Inside the Black College

Less than six months from its broadcast, the production of the black college still in full swing. Here, in the heart of Studio La Cachette in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, the animators work meticulously under the direction of director Ulysse Malassagne, who adapts his own comic strip here.

This comic book in three volumes published from 2016 to 2019 tells the adventures of five middle school students in the middle of Cantal, as they go in search of the lost soul of one of their comrades. They will find themselves confronted with a witch and other terrifying creatures of the region. An entire program.

This dark story takes on an unprecedented ambition and new challenges, brought by the very nature of the animated series, subtitled “Complainte d’Auvergne”. A new canvas on which Ulysse Malassagne had to resume his original work and conscientiously extend its horizons.

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The series was born from this desire to highlight the richness of French mythology, according to him too rare on the screens: “I was fascinated by the idea of doing with French folklore what Japanese artists do so well with their yokai stories. They have this habit of reintegrating them into their modern stories, whereas in France, we are in forgetting all our rural imagination”.

And the task is daunting: six 15-minute episodes to create, traditional animation, around thirty people at work separated between the Parisian studio and another in Carpentras, but also an unprecedented co-production between La Cachette, the streaming platform ADN and the mythical studio of Toei Animation (Grendizer, dragonball, One Piece).

While waiting for the final result, which we can’t wait to discover, the first images are promising… and to be discovered below.

Watch the series credits:

Interview – Ulysse Malassagne (writer/director)

“Cantal has a very strong identity, with a lot of nature, old stones, legends associated with volcanoes, the devil…”.

Why did you decide to tell this story? Why in Cantal?

Initially, it was a project for the magazine Geo Teen. They wanted a little horrifying monthly comic. I really liked doing autobiographical comics and drawing my friends, so I decided to create this semi-autobiographical story, tinged with the supernatural, to pay homage to this region where I grew up. It’s a beautiful place, very aesthetic, almost cinematic. Cantal has a very strong identity, with a lot of nature, old stones, legends associated with volcanoes, the devil…

Did the change of medium make you perceive your story and your universe differently?

Absolutely. I found it was very difficult to adapt what I had written in a different medium. I had a hard time detaching myself from what I had already done, what to take away, what to keep. That’s why it was important to work with Magali Pouzol, the co-screenwriter of the series (The Summit of the Gods). She brought all her know-how to the structure of a series.

“Le Collège Noir is a 100% French production, with no foreign subcontracting”.

What is your primary ambition with The Black College ?

Make the best series possible, already (laughs) ! The Black College comes right after Star Wars: Visionswhere we were able to make a short from A to Z for the first time. Here, it is still the step above in terms of ambition, because adapted from an original story over six episodes and potentially two seasons.

There is also this French identity which is important to me. The Black College is a 100% French production, with no foreign subcontracting. And we have the ambition to produce a series of this size on a niche that we no longer see too much in France, that is to say for an audience that is between adolescence and adulthood, on this box “in between”. It’s going to be something quite unique.

Where does this affinity for local folklore and mythology come from, which often comes up in La Cachette productions?

We tell ourselves that a story works all the better when it is anchored in something real and when we play with this balance between real and imaginary. This idea was important to me on The Black College, I went to take hundreds of photos in Cantal so that we could recognize specific places. It reinforces the supernatural all the more when it is in contrast with a reality.

Do you have a message for viewers who are waiting for the series?

The series is even better than the comics! (laughs) Kidding aside, I think anyone who liked the comic is going to like the show. And we’ve put in enough new stuff for people who haven’t read the comic to enjoy the show.

Series The Black College will be broadcast in October 2023 on the DNA streaming platform.

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