GKIDS is releasing a new adult, sci-fi animated action drama in theaters nationwide beginning this Thursday May 2nd. Mars Express, from co-writer and director Jérémie Périn, is about a detective agency duo (one human, the other android) on the red planet during a dangerous time in the year 2200. What will they uncover? Here’s what moviegoers can expect from this 2023 Annecy selection and 2024 Cesar Awards nominee. (This interview with Périn was conducted as an Email Q&A and was edited for length and clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: How did you organize how this incredibly detailed futuristic society on Mars would function?

Jérémie Périn: We worked in layers. When writing the script with Laurent Sarfati, our aim was to depict a credible, tangible universe. As far as possible, we wanted to avoid magical or overly fanciful science fiction. That’s why we thought about the rules of the Mars Express universe, not only in terms of technology, but also from a political and social point of view, the organization of urban planning, etc. To do this, we met with specialists in various fields: planetologists, programmers, car designers… All of them contributed their expertise and inspired us to write, giving us ideas that could take us out of certain reflexes of sci-fi representations. With the broad outlines established in the script, it was a matter of making the whole thing visual and coherent. That’s where Mikael Robert, the film’s art director, and the various people in charge of mecha design, props, sets, etc. came in. We added even more ideas that consolidated and enriched the written basis of this world.