Netflix's Lupin is the most recent entry in a series that includes, of all things, Inspector Gadget! Starring Omar Sy, the new Lupin TV adaptation is loosely based upon (and even references) a series of French stories from the early 20th century written by Maurice Leblanc that featured the titular archetypal gentleman thief. Although relatively obscure in the United States, the Arsène Lupin character has inspired many stories since his creation.
Perhaps the most well-known of piece of media to be derived from Arsène Lupin is the Japanese series created by the artist known as Monkey Punch. First appearing in an eponymous manga in 1967, Arsène Lupin III is meant to be a descendent of the original Arsène Lupin and follows in his ancestor's footsteps by being a brilliant scoundrel. This character is much beloved and successful in his own right, inspiring more than half a century of media. Lupin III is also notable for being the source material for Hayao Miyazaki's first film, The Castle of Cagliostro.
In 1982, there were plans to create a spinoff of Lupin III called Lupin VIII, following the adventures of a further distant descendant of the Lupin line. However, issues arose with the party that held the rights to the original French Arsène Lupin (the First), who wanted greater compensation because the show would be shown in France. By the time the project fully fell through, its developers, DIC Audiovisuel and TMS Entertainment, had invested too heavily to abandon the project all together, and so instead decided to repurpose some of the assets for use in a new project: Inspector Gadget.
While Inspector Gadget did reuse certain technical elements from the proposed Lupin VIII, the show itself was very different from the Lupin series in terms of tone and worldbuilding. But the Lupin III anime series already diverged from the content of the manga fairly significantly, particularly with regards to intended audience, so this was not unprecedented. Furthermore, the forced rebranding meant cutting ties from all previous stories anyway, allowing the show greater creative freedom than would even have been permitted for a spinoff (with the caveat that it was still in essence a corporate endeavor). Perhaps because of this, the character Inspector Gadget has persisted intermittently throughout the intervening decades, despite not being as colossally famous as some of his '80s cartoon peers like Transformers and My Little Pony, with his most recent revival premiering in 2015.
Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin is now in the public domain, so such an issue is a thing of the past for the character. But the case of Lupin VIII remains a vivid illustration of the issues that can arise when dealing with the rights to widely recognized characters, issues that still occur today — and with more frequency and complexity than ever; one need look no further than the dispute over Sherlock Holmes' characterization in Enola Holmes. The distinction is that Inspector Gadget stands as the unintended benefit of what was otherwise an unproductive dispute and as a result is now a strange and obscure link in a long chain of inspiration reaching all the way back to Leblanc and beyond, one which, if Netflix's Lupin is any indication, shows no signs of concluding any time soon.
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