The series producer,
Marc du Pontavice, president of the then-Gaumont Multimédia, grew up with comic books in his childhood, one of which was the
Mandrake the Magician comics, whose stories revolved around magic. For years, du Pontavice harbored the desire to base a show on magic, and coupled with the studio's desire to invent an original action/adventure series that emulated the tradition of
American comics from the 1940s, it became a springboard for the creation of the show. In October 1995, at
MIPCOM, Marc decided to bring his vision of the series to life and spoke with Marie-Line Petrequin, the vice president of animation at the German television channel
ProSieben. Petrequin liked the idea from the start, but the problem of violence was increasing in Germany, and this was a series more about thinking than about very harsh actions, but she was sure they were interested in the show. Marc also initiated a meeting with Bertrand Mosca, then head of programming at
France 3, where he was very enthusiastic about the simple idea of creating a superhero main character with magic as its theme. At the time, the show was just an idea. Florian Ferrier created the characters and designed the protagonist Ace Cooper, along with a troop of helpers. Savin Yeatman and Gilles Adrien developed the complete bible that served as the basis for the series, which they completed in June 1996. Around the same time, some scripts and synopses were ready to be released, where, in Marc du Pontavice's words, "they practically had the series." In the summer of 1996,
Gaumont invited France 3 to review everything that had been developed up to that point. The channel gave the studio some feedback, including comments on the vision for the main character Ace, which was very close to the tradition of
Marvel Comics, full of muscular characters. They wanted to make him less muscular, to make him more elegant and classy. In August 1996, Marc invited Petrequin from ProSieben, which had partnered with Gaumont on all the series the studio had produced since 1994, to his office in Paris, where the two companies signed an agreement within 48 hours. According to Petrequin, at that time, ProSieben had much more animation than it does now, so there were many vacancies to fill. From the beginning, the channel's main concerns had to do with the representation of women in the program. At each stage, Gaumont asked ProSieben for feedback, where, according to them, they always asked for more active women in the series, where the dialogue [of the girls] was very superficial, they were reacting, and in a very traditional way, they were not proactive, and they were not making independent decisions. At the time, there were no series on the market with young girls in central roles, which ended up changing. At
MIPTV in April of the same year, Marc du Pontavice and his team orchestrated a meeting with
Giochi Preziosi, which was seeking to become a global force and was looking for properties to create toy lines. The toymaker liked the show. In October of the same year at MIPCOM, Gaumont closed a deal with Giochi Preziosi for the company to develop toys based on the series. The series was offered to the
BBC in the United Kingdom, and the American children's channels
Nickelodeon and
Disney Channel, who told Gaumont that it was a great concept, but suggested making it "an anti-
Batman show", making it bright and colorful. Production of the series itself began in May 1997 thanks to a financing arrangement with ProSieben and had six scripts written.
France 2 and France 3, both from
France Télévisions, decided to join the production of the show. The production of the first episode of
The Magician was completed in July 1998. The American toy company that Giochi Preziosi had hired to represent
The Magician products sent its designs, but neither the Italian company nor Marc were satisfied with the results. According to them, they were turning the characters into warriors, which they disliked intensely, and the contracted company failed to understand the concept behind the show. It was then that Gaumont suggested to Giochi that the studio's own artists design the figures, marking their first foray into toy design. Giochi Preziosi loved Gaumont's toys, which were based on the studio's designs. ==Episodes==