The live-action French remake of Tsukasa Hojo’s “Cat’s Eyes” manga captured 46% of France’s 15-to-24 audience on TF1 – a figure its distributor described as “totally unexpected” – before selling into more than 50 territories and landing on Hulu in the U.S.
Rodolphe Buet, chief distribution officer of StudioTF1, a wholly owned subsidiary of TF1 Group, laid out how the series got made, how it found its audience and what the team intends to do differently in season 2 at a Cannes Film Market panel this week. The session arrived as the market’s inaugural Japan IP Market – a three-day event co-organized with TIFFCOM as part of Japan’s Country of Honor designation – underscored the global appetite for exactly the kind of Franco-Japanese creative partnership that gave “Cat’s Eyes” its origins.
Set in contemporary Paris, “Cat’s Eyes” follows three sisters – Tamara (Camille Lou), Sylia (Constance Labbé) and Alexia (Claire Romain) – who reunite to steal back a work of art tied to their father’s decade-old disappearance, while evading police captain Quentin Chapuis (MB14), who carries an unresolved romantic history with one of the trio. The eight-episode series, produced and directed by Alexandre Laurent, was made at a budget of more than €20 million ($23 million).
The show’s demographic results were the headline. TF1’s core linear audience averages 56 years old, and pulling nearly half of a country’s youngest adult viewers to a primetime broadcast is the kind of outcome that rarely happens by accident. Two of the three leads were already familiar to TF1 audiences; the third, Romain, was discovered through a daily entertainment program. The animated property “Miraculous Ladybug” had previously signaled that female-driven action concepts could find an audience on the channel – but nothing in that precedent predicted a 46% share of the 15-to-24 bracket.
Buet pointed to intergenerational word of mouth as a key driver. Women aged 35 to 45 within the company had grown up watching the original anime when TF1 broadcast it in France in the 1980s, and passed their affection for the property on to their own children. That relay, combined with a social media campaign, helped the show reach an audience TF1 would not typically expect from linear broadcast.
Financing required multiple partners. Prime Video took the French second window along with rights for Japan and Latin America. RAI and ZDF came on board as co-financiers after a targeted pitch campaign; StudioTF1’s distribution arm covered the remaining gap deficit.
“We are extremely pleased to have the show in the U.S. through Hulu, probably the best platforms for non-English speaking shows,” Buet said.
Getting to production required years of persistence. The production company Big Band spent roughly a decade pursuing the rights to Hojo’s manga, with formal talks with the rights holders stretching five to six years before both sides aligned on an approach that would honor the source material. The company’s two founders, who had grown up watching the original anime, drove that pursuit.
The original “Cat’s Eyes” anime reached French audiences as part of the 1980s wave of Japanese animation that performed strongly on French linear television, alongside titles such as “Goldorak.” The property stood out within that wave for centering on a female protagonist – rare in the genre at the time – and built a loyal female fanbase that, decades later, helped seed the remake’s reception.