Around The World With Willy Fog is becoming a feature film

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The legendary children’s animated series Around The World With Willy Fog is getting a movie adaptation, it’s been revealed.

The news cycle at the moment, you don’t need us to tell you, is very much on the grim side. You only have to open the front page of any major news outlet, and the best you can hope for is something to make you inwardly tut.

This, chums, is not one of those stories.

In the mid-1980s, Children’s BBC here in the UK broadcast the sublime animated TV series Around The World With Willy Fog. Across 26 episodes, we followed Fog, Rigodon, Tico “the mascot”, Princess Romy and Inspector Dix in a loose adaptation of Jules Verne’s Around The World In Eighty Days. The Spanish series became a hit in the UK, helped in no small part by how enthusiastically Children’s BBC embraced it.

Evidence? National Willy Fog day on March 3^rd 1988, when Andy Crane sang along to the theme tune. I interviewed him about it once, and he recalled how they had postbags full of requests for the lyrics. And here’s what happened…

Now comes the news that Willy Fog is making a return, with a remake of sorts in the form of a fresh animated feature film. This is not a drill.

The film will come from the Spanish studio Apolo Films, that’s also coming to the end of production on its feature based on Dogtanian And The Three Muskehounds. You can read more about that here.

The Willy Fog project has now been announced on its website, with the plan being for a 90 minute CG feature. It’s in development at the moment, and be in no doubt that we’ll be bringing you more on the film as we hear it. Here’s the art released so far…