Cannes: France is bidding for a spot in the television big league with a new crime series shot in English for the global market, starring The Professional actor Jean Reno in its lead role.
The country's largest private television network, TF1, unveiled details of the project, to be filmed in Paris in mid-2012, on day one of the influential MIPTV audiovisual market in the Riviera city of Cannes on Sunday.
"We needed a star who was both French and international, a great American author specialised in crime writing, and a very aggressive international distributor," Takis Candilis, CEO of Lagardere Entertainment, whose Atlantique Productions arm will co-produce the series with TF1, told AFP.
Reno, who played a top cop in Da Vinci Code, is to take on the main character Jo Le Grand, a veteran cop relentless in tackling difficult-to-crack crimes - the actor's first lead role in a television series.
Reno told a press lunch Sunday he is at ease speaking English: "My wife is English and we speak both languages at home," he said. He describes his character as "a cop with scars", who renews contact with his daughter during the series. "Everything he has done wrong will gradually rise to the surface," smiled the actor, who said he enjoyed the way a series allows its characters to develop episode by episode.
The other big star of the eight-episode series will be Paris itself, said Candilis. Each of the crimes Reno's character takes on will revolve around one of the city's iconic landmarks, starting off at Notre Dame Cathedral, followed by the Eiffel Tower, and the Pigalle red light district.
For the project, the producers hired Rene Balcer, the Emmy-award winning writer, director and producer best known for his work on Law and Order, one of the biggest hit shows on the US channel NBC.
Los Angeles-based Balcer, who grew up in French-speaking Montreal, is behind the French series concept and will write two of the eight episodes, ensuring the coherence of the rest.
With Balcer on board, the producers are firmly setting their sights on the US TV market. Senior TF1 production executive Laurent Storch said it would be the channel's first international production in English.
"The main language of the audiovisual market is English, and that means films sell 10 times better if they are in English," he said. Historically, French series, shot on relatively small budgets, have struggled to sell at export.
Only a very small number have been shot in English, a sine qua non condition for them to be pre-sold outside France, Lagardere executives explained. With a budget per episode of some two million euros, each episode will run to 42 minutes, the standard length in the US prime time TV market.
Jens Richter of SevenOne international, the show's distributor, said the initial response to the project at MIPTV was very strong. The show will be shot entirely on location and in English, then dubbed and subtitled for other countries, Klaus Zimmerman of Atlantique Productions said.
