Seasons 1–5 The series' conception came from the rise of girl groups and female singers in the music industry. Wanting to capitalize on the niche, David Michel and
Vincent Chalvon-Demersay put their idea into development, which later shifted into production within a year. According to Michel, the series' animation style was influenced by
anime. The production company,
Marathon Media, intended on building on the series brand by forming a three-piece girl band, utilizing German talk show
Arabella to create it. Using a panel of judges, 20 demo videos were selected and the winners were selected based on the strength of their performance and the series' viewers. The band was selected and released a single in the spring of 2002, through
EMI. According to managing director Dirk Fabarius, "The plan is to eventually create an entire album and establish and promote Totally Spies as a real band." In an interview with WorldScreen.com, Michel explained that prior to the series, there were a lot of boy action-adventure shows and practically nothing for girls, yet in pop culture, there were
Britney Spears and the
Spice Girls. He explained that the characters are heavily inspired by the movie
Clueless and wanted to mix that with a
James Bond format. When they first pitched the show, it had a moderate response, but when the first season was broadcast, the
''Charlie's Angels'' film came out, and suddenly the market was full of girl show properties. According to an article "Achieving a Global Reach on Children's Cultural Markets" by Valerie-Ines de la Ville and Laurent Durup, the series was originally designed to reach an American audience, but has garnered appeal from its humor "based on a stereotypical European vision of American references" while "appearing to be original and innovative to the U.S. audience". Producer and artistic director Stephane Berry explained that the style "is a melting between the American style, which associates action and comedy, and Japanese design for the aesthetic environment and the emotions expressed through the large eyes of the characters." Some of the common references have included ''
Charlie's Angels, Beverly Hills, The Avengers, James Bond and its gadgets, and Cat's Eye''. The character design was originally done by
Gil Formosa. The head writers for the series were Robert and Michelle Lamoreaux, who were based in Los Angeles and had worked on
Nickelodeon shows. Demersay and Stephane Berry had both recently worked with
Saban Entertainment in Europe. In a
GeoCities interview, Kate Griffin, who voices Alex, mentioned that the typical session for the three girls is that they would record as an ensemble, but through a phone patch, with Hale and Baker calling from Los Angeles, and herself in Toronto. Following the end of the fifth season, the series' movie,
Totally Spies! The Movie, was produced and released to theatres in France on 22 July 2009. The movie received a telecast release in the United States on 25 April the following year, coinciding with the airing of the series' fifth season there.
Seasons 6–present In August 2011, Marathon Media confirmed that production for a sixth season was underway and set to premiere in 2013, with
Jennifer Hale,
Andrea Baker,
Katie Griffin and Adrian Truss reprising their roles. The sixth series would be produced only by Marathon in association with
TF1 and
The Walt Disney Company France. It was later confirmed that 26 episodes would be produced and that the series would be licensed in Spain and Latin America, with European territories following suit. To coincide with the sixth season's premiere,
Zodiak Kids CP Paris, in association with Château de Versailles Spectacles (CVS) and TF1, organized an event at the
Palace of Versailles, taking place during Summer 2013. On 8 January 2022, Thomas Astruc, the creator of
Miraculous Ladybug, who had previously worked on
Totally Spies!, announced on Twitter that a new season of the latter was "in the making". On the 13th, revised character designs for Sam, Alex and Clover were revealed. It was originally set to premiere in 2023, but was later pushed back to 2024. The upcoming series will be produced by Zodiak Kids & Family Studio France, with Ollenom (Production subsidiary of fellow Zodiak Kids & Family subsidiary Monello Productions) as co-producer, and French-broadcaster
Gulli and Latin American-broadcaster
Discovery Kids as participators. On 25 April 2023, it was announced that
Warner Bros. Discovery had acquired broadcast rights to the series in the United States and
EMEA regions, where the series would air on
Cartoon Network in the United States and stream on
Max in EMEA regions. In September 2023,
Andrea Baker (the voice actress of Clover) confirmed on her Twitter that she and the rest of the voice cast would not be returning. On 13 June 2024, it was announced that the show had been renewed for an eighth season. == Telecast and home media ==