A Singing and Dancing Origin Story

The team behind Miraculous: Lady Bug & Cat Noir, The Movie discusses mixing musical and Marvel tropes in their much-anticipated project.

- By Karen Idelson -

When audiences see Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir, The Movie this summer, they will be able to embrace their favorite teen French superheroes in a new story that marks the first feature-length adaptation of the beloved TV series. Director Jeremey Zag is offering fans something sacred in the superhero realm — the origin story.

Zag, who also developed the hugely popular series with Thomas Astruc, was inspired to create the origin story for the characters Ladybug and Cat Noir by his own love of film, animation, song and dance. The colorful film brings together the things he’s admired in a way that he hopes audiences will find interesting and original.

“Because I grew up in France, and I watched a lot and read a lot of manga and superheroes comics, I felt there was nothing in between those things,” says Zag. “The way girls were presented was as an object. There wasn’t something that was about girl power and girls being the superhero. In the past, in Japanese animation, the girls are always very sexy. Now, when you watch all the Marvel superheroes with your kids, you may not realize this, but it’s all military stuff, and the boys are very strong and masculine. So, I really wanted to create something in-between, where the girl superheroes are very much into their girl power, are very iconic, and the final results don’t look like something militaristic.”

It Had to Be Paris

Zag adds, “The male character could be a boy who is not just very masculine and military either. He can still be very iconic. I also wanted to add an element of a love story because I’m French and we enjoy love stories. The setting had to be Paris, where I can show the audience this beautiful city that we destroy when there are supervillains for our heroes to fight. The final thing I had to have — songs. I grew up watching Disney princesses who would sing their feelings and move the story forward and I never understood why we didn’t see that as much with superheroes. In a way, I made this movie for myself. I wanted to do it this way with these things simply because I wanted to watch it.”

Zag often worked on the songs and lyrics first with Chris Read, Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) and Britt Burton when it came to developing the story. He found the songs were a kind of emotional shorthand that communicated the emotions of the moment that he was trying to capture and invited the audience into that moment at the same time.

The voice cast for the movie includes Cristina Vee Valenzuela (Marinette/Ladybug), Bryce Papenbrook (Adrien/Cat Noir), Keith Silverstein (Gabriel

Agreste/Hawk Moth), Carrie Keranen (Alya), Selah Victor (Chloé Bourgeois), Zeno Robinson (Nino), Chris Smith (Tom), Anne Yatco (Sabine), Paul St Peter (Wang Fu), Mela Lee (Tikki), Max Mittelman (Plagg), Cassandra Lee Morris (Sabrina) and Sabrina Weisz (Nathalie).

Zag Animation Studios was the creative studio on the film and ON Animation (The Little Prince, Playmobil: The Movie) in Montreal was the CG animation production studio. Zagtoon and Method Animation produced the film. Since much of the film was made during the pandemic, Zag and his crew found ways to work from different time zones and online.

Crimefighting with Music

One of the most demanding areas for this process was the sort of dance style used in many of the fighting sequences. Ladybug and Cat Noir were already known for their elegant and entertaining way of moving while fighting off villains and generally saving the day in each episode of the series, which first premiered in 2015. Zag was looking for heightened sense of movement that was inspired by karate as well as dance for this film.

“It’s very specific, because I worked with a choreographer who has done lots of action sequences,” says Zag. “These are the same people I’ve worked with [on the series], because I didn’t want to have something totally disconnected. There’s a dance when there is fighting. And we also have songs in our movie so it’s very important to have the right kinds of movement and dance.”

Zag’s team for choreography and visualization were Cameron Sonerson and Shannon Holtzapffel, who have been working together since 2015 and have collaborated on live-action musicals like The Greatest Showman. They have also lent their expertise to animated films such as Luck and Minions: The Rise of Gru, and last year’s hybrid pic Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile. Sonerson is an expert in CG, action/fight sequences and camera design, and Holtzapfle is a trained and experienced choreographer, dancer and stage performer.

“Ladybug’s ballet and jazz line style naturally existed within her character presentation, posing, posture and femininity — and while kicking butt,” says Holtzapffel. “We also needed to show the innocent romanticism of a young relationship progressing as they find the strength to come together as a couple, so a waltz was fitting for exposition. The characters also believe in the fairy tale themselves.”

Sonerson mentions that it was crucial to design with a strong sense of timing and rhythm to the music and to make the audience feel the emotions of the characters. “Once we had a clear idea of the scene, we started with video blocking (video-viz),” he says. “If there were any storyboards or concept art, we would honor those references and build from there. I would film Shannon’s performance as we developed the movement and created an edit of video choreography. This allowed a very fast turnaround of ideas and pacing of the sequence (plus a lot of funny bloopers).”

The team would then review the footage with Zag and iterate any new ideas. “This process was very important, as especially with action/musicals, the character and camera need to complement each other,” he adds. “This gave us a strong edit base to then start developing how the choreography would fit into the world of the character and the staging of the shots. We referenced the video and created a CG blocking pass on the edit; This was usually Maya CG character/camera posing or motion capture. I would then work with some temp sound design and recorded the character’s lines as ADR. Once approved, the CG edit and video was passed onto the animation team to use as final reference to add all the amazing details.”

Another important part of the movie is the backdrop itself, the timeless city of Paris. While American filmmakers often destroy New York City in a superhero film, Zag wanted to take Paris down in a memorable way, according to the film’s executive producer Emmanuel Jacomet (Playmobil: The Movie).

“We always believe that all those superhero stories will always happen in New York or in Tokyo, and the story and the action will happen on those big buildings in these well-known cities,” says Jacomet. “So, we decided we wouldn’t just have this romantic cobblestone version of Paris. It’s a city that usually makes people think of love, but it can be more than that. We were paying tribute to Paris, but also making it a place where the superheroes could fight the villain to save the city. We wanted to capture the mystery and the history of the city as well. We wanted Paris to be seen as a city where action can happen like New York and London. Our goal was to make Paris into an action city.”

“We were excited to work with destroying the city when our villain begins to go after our superheroes,” he notes. “Some people probably think of Paris as not a place you would want to destroy, but that’s part of the fun in animation because you can create ideas about how that would happen. Rebuilding the city was also quite exciting because that’s another type of creation.”

Playing with Magical Realism

The filmmakers also wanted to embrace the full power of animation and to take advantage of all the unique things that were possible in the medium. Producer Aton Soumache (The Little Prince, Little Nicholas: Happy as Can Be) says he wanted to focus on a vision of the overall film and of Paris itself that would set the project apart.

“We said to each other that we should make Paris magically realistic,” says Soumache. “And I think that’s something that sticks with us through the entire duration of production because Jeremy [Zag] immediately told us that we’re making an animated movie, not a live-action movie. Animation gives you this immense power of magic and wonder. We don’t want this to be just what you expect — the Eiffel Tower or something like that. I don’t want people to recognize Paris. I want people to be able to remember something very different, maybe even very different than what they remember if they’ve been to Paris. We all have a vision of Paris or an idea of the city. I want the movie to appeal to that idea in a very magical way in a way that is not quite realistic. It’s beyond what you might have in real life.”

Miraculous: Ladybug and Cat Noir, The Movie premieres on Netflix on July 28.