Around the World with Willy Fog — BrandWiki

Around the World with Willy Fog

genre	Adventure
developer	Claudio Biern Boyd
based on	Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
theme music composer	Guido and Maurizio De Angelis
open theme	"La vuelta al mundo de Willy Fog" by Mocedades
end theme	"Sílbame" by Mocedades
country	Spain
language	Spanish
num episodes	26
list episodes	List of Around the World with Willy Fog episodes
company	BRB Internacional Televisión Española
runtime	26 mins
network	TVE1
first aired	January 8, 1984
last aired	July 15, 1984
related	Willy Fog 2 (1994–95)

Around the World with Willy Fog is a Spanish animated television adaptation of the 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. It was produced by Spanish studio BRB Internacional and Televisión Española, with animation by Japanese studio Nippon Animation, and was first broadcast on TVE1 weekly in 1984.[1][2]

Jules Verne's original characters are depicted as animals in the series.[3] The core trio are all felines being pursued by three canine foes. Willy Fog (Phileas Fogg in the original book) is depicted as a lion, while Rigodon (Passepartout) is a cat, and Romy (Aouda) is a panther.[4]

An English

Plot

Willy Fog awakens and rings for his servant, only to remember that he had fired him the previous day for his inability to follow Fog's precise schedule. He interviews and hires a replacement – the former circus performer Rigodon – before leaving for the Reform Club.

At the club, the members discuss the recent theft of £55,000 from the Bank of England, until the bank's governor, Mr. Sullivan, arrives. An article in the Morning Chronicle details how it is now possible to travel around the world in eighty days. The article states that one departs London by train for Dover, where one crosses to Calais, and on to Paris. From there, it is a train journey to Brindisi, and the Suez Canal, all within a week. Having rounded the Arabian peninsula, one would arrive in Bombay on day 20 and then a three-day railway journey to Calcutta. Hong Kong is reached on day 33, Yokohama on day 39, and then a mammoth three-week crossing of the Pacific to arrive in San Francisco on day 61, a week-long train crossing to New York City and then finally a nine-day crossing of the Atlantic back to London making it possible to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days.

The other members of the club laugh at Lord Guinness's suggestion that he would have taken on the challenge himself if he were younger. Fog rises to defend the Lord's honour by taking up the task himself. Sullivan bets Fog £5,000 that it is impossible, and additional wagers by three other club members increase this amount to £20,000. He then stuns the club by announcing that he will leave that evening and promises to return to the club by 8:45 pm on 21 December 1872.

Rigodon is not impressed to hear the news of their impending trip, having spent his life travelling with the circus, but he dutifully accompanies his master as they set out. They however don't know that they are pursued by three individuals determined to halt their progress. Inspector Dix and Constable Bully of Scotland Yard are convinced that Fog is the thief who robbed the Bank of England, and the wicked Transfer, a saboteur, was hired by Mr. Sullivan to impede Fog's journey.

In other media

Home media

In 1986, Sony Video Software released the series on VHS in the United States.[12]

From 3 October 1988 to 10 September 1990, select episodes were released in the United Kingdom on PAL VHS tapes by Video Collection International.

In 1995, BRB Internacional released three direct-to-video Willy Fog films – Around the World in 80 Days,[13] Journey to the Center of the Earth[14] and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea[15] – each one created by heavily editing both series from roughly 650 minutes each down to a truncated 75 minutes apiece. All three films were dubbed by Village Productions, who had previously dubbed the second series for the United Kingdom, and later reached the United States on DVD. Notably, the Village Productions dub for the first film was able to secure use of Intersound's English-language version of the theme tune.

In 2004, Revelation Films released all twenty-six episodes of Around the World with Willy Fog on DVD in the UK, across five Region-0-encoded discs. Extras included character profiles, a Jules Verne biography, and bonus episodes of Arthur! and the Square Knights of the Round Table and Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds. In 2005, all five discs were collected in a complete series box set.

Around 2016, the English dub of all episodes of the series was uploaded to BRB Internacional's official YouTube channel.[16]

Around the World with Willy Fog: The Musical

La vuelta al mundo de Willy Fog: El Musical was released in 2008 in celebration of the show's 25th anniversary in its home country of Spain. With the original cartoon soundtrack by the De Angelises, the theatrical performance featured live actors Jaume Ortonobas (Fog), Laura Toledo (Romy) and José Troncoso (Rigodon) in make-up and masks to replicate the anthropomorphic characters of the cartoon. Tico is represented as a puppet manipulated by Celia Vioque. Scripted by original series creator Claudio Biern Boyd and directed by Ricard Reguant, the musical ran twice a day in the Teatro Häagen-Dazs Calderón in Madrid from October 2008; although originally intended only to run until the end of the year, the show's success saw its run extended first until early February 2009, after which it proved so successful that it went on tour around the country until the end of the year.[5][6]

Feature film

In November 2020, it was reported that a film based on the series was in development by Apolo Films and was slated for release in 2023.[17] The film will be 3D computer-animated. As of 2025, no further information on the project has surfaced.[18]