This Iznogoud cartoon footage was made by René Goscinny's animation studio Idéfix Productions (more well-known as Studios Idéfix) sometimes in the 70s. Most of it has been up on INA's YouTube channel for years, but a clip on ina.fr contains more material in the beginning and end, so I wanted to share it here. The animation is quite funny and, while stylized, feels closer in many respects to the spirit of Jean Tabary's artwork in the Iznogoud comic books than the 1995 animated series by Saban.

By the way: if you know French, feel free to translate the dialogue. I understand the basic gist, but not everything the characters are saying.

I don't know what purpose the footage was produced for. But judging by the text credit at 00:05 - "DOCUMENT F. SLOMKA ['' Un sur Cinq "]" - it originally aired on "Un sur Cinq", a weekly French television show for teenagers running on Antenne 2 from 1975 to -78. F. Slomka, aka the journalist Francis Slomka, had a regular segment on the show about the world of comics, where many famous French and Belgian creators appeared.

Cels from this Iznogoud animation also circulate among collectors; and a sales ad on Catawiki claims that they are from an advertising cartoon produced by the Idéfix studio to promote the release of an album: [ Ссылка ] The writer is a bit undecided about the year, though: the headline says 1976 while the description says 1977. But if it really was intended to promote a specific album, then 1976 is more likely, since the French Iznogoud album 12 was published in October of that year. So perhaps the animation aired on "Un sur Cinq" in 1976, along with Goscinny and/or Tabary guesting the program and being interviewed by Francis Slomka? I still hesitate to say a definite production year since so little information about this animated footage is to be found anywhere.

It's possible that the footage was longer and included more animation in its original context. The version I'm uploading aired on Antenne 2 in the evening of November 6, 1977, as part of a portrait of René Goscinny following his death on the day before. The full portrait can be seen here: [ Ссылка ] Additionally the animation aired in a shorter version in a November 6 news item, which is the clip INA uploaded to YouTube years ago: [ Ссылка ] / [ Ссылка ]

I should add that the French Wikipedia claims that Studios Idéfix had a full-fledged animated Iznogoud film in the works prior to Goscinny's death: [ Ссылка ] But this statement has no sources that verify it, and might as well just be a theory from someone who has seen the Antenne 2 footage. It's not illogical to assume that Gocinny's animation studio could have been developing an actual Iznogoud film at some point, but I have never seen any evidence that they did so.

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