Asterix Films: Rarities and abandoned projects.

There was an unreleased Asterix film in 1973, called The Dogmatix Movie. I'm slightly baffled - if something is unreleased, does it mean it has been made?

I'm guessing it was, but it never saw the light of day. There is proof of this as it was adapted to a comic strip format in 2003.

Asterix and The Golden Sickle, made after the first animated film, Asterix the Gaul. This film is incomplete; yet again I would be interested to see if there is any test footage from this.
I think it would make good viewing.

What was to be the third live action movie Asterix and Obelix in Spain was abandoned.

And last but not least Asterix Conquers America, the only finished Asterix film not to have a DVD release, which is a shame because I enjoyed Craig Charles as Asterix.
The film also was quite fun.

Looking for info on the net for The Dogmatix Movie seems to bring up multiple articles which are all word-for-word the same, suggesting that they have all been copied from one original; on that basis, it's hard to know exactly what was done, as one has to rely entirely on the fact that the original source was correct.
The existence of the book version isn't actually proof that the movie was made - unless of course it contains an explanation of what happened, which would be useful!

It could be that the book was a means of showing people what the movie would have been like, or even just an opportunity to use up ideas intended for a film.
It's not to say that the movie wasn't made and shelved (that does happen, for a variety of reasons), but it would be handy to find further independent information to support the notion.

As for the two Golden Sickle adaptations, my guess here is that rights are at play. The original Asterix the Gaul cartoon was made without the knowledge of Goscinny and Uderzo, and they were not happy when they found out, and did not like the finished work. I believe that they acted to exert their rights as creators, and this may have led to a situation where the film-rights ended up in dispute.

Similar problems beset the James Bond movie Thunderball, where rights were granted to writers who helped Ian Fleming with the story, but got no credit when Fleming adapted their story as a book; they then had rights to remake it - which they did, as Never Say Never Again, but subsequent legal wrangling meant that a third version, Warhead 2000 remained unmade. However, the producers of the main series couldn't remake Thunderball (had they wanted to) even though they were in posession to all the other rights in James Bond. That's a potted version of what was a very complex case, but it shows how film rights can be held in limbo.

It could be that the makers of the first cartoon Sickle were prevented from finishing the film due to legal intervention, but then were able to hold up the making of a second version because they still had rights in the property. This is entirely guess work, but could be a possible explanation.

Without anything else to go on, it's hard to know what constitutes a live-action Asterix in Spain being "abandoned" - had they filmed anything? Was it just one of several ideas, and they went with something else (at the Olympic Games)? Perhaps they couldn't get a workable script together, or the director wanted to do something else, or the cast had veto rights?

Asterix in America may not be out on DVD in the UK, but it was released on VHS as I recall, and has been released elsewhere on DVD, so it may be that nobody wanted to put it out?
Craig Charles was a good choice for the voice of Asterix, although I was happy with Bill Oddie too.

I do remember being very disappointed as a child when the BBC showed Asterix the Gaul in 1970; not only was the animation dire (and as I have said before, I have a fairly low threshold of enjoyment for things like cartoons!), but the voices were rotten, especially Obelix - they sounded nothing like they should have... They also showed it in eight episodes, on Sunday afternoons, which meant that the whole affair was even more lacklustre.

I saw Asterix and The Big Fight for the first time in December 2001 on BBC 2 and it was great Bill Oddie voiced Asterix and Brian Blessed did a voice to and it was very enjoyable.

However the DVD box set contains this film in its American dub - which is mad! There are two English dubs one for British audiences one for American audiences?
I understand marketing for both sides of the pond, but come on!?
I strongly dislike the American dub as it sounds like Popeye and Son, if you understand what I mean.
The English dub is superior - I wish it had been on the DVD.


I saw this on BBC 2 in about 2003-2004. It was interesting, but the animation was really bad and the song about food, "If you're not eating, there's something wrong with you", was pretty bad!
Song about a donkey anyone? ;-)

All I remember from this film is Asterix's use of the word "Jackass".

I felt that Asterix and Cleopatra which came out about a year or two after was quite good and I enjoyed it.

I don't know if they filmed anything, but I remember hearing a news story saying the author who is still alive (sorry, don't remember if it's Gosciny or Uderzo) vetoed the movie, because he was not happy with the results of Cleopatra.

I have just viewed Asterix and The Vikings for the second time.
I hated it first time, but I thought I would give it a second chance.
It was really bad.
The animation was spot on, but there were too many references to pop music and text messaging. It didn't have much life to it.
A shame really, as I'm not sure if we will see another animated Asterix film, because this one didn't go down too well when it came out.