Netflix CEO Reed Hastings officially opened the new Paris office at the center of the 9th arrondissement. The new office is a testament to the streaming company’s long-term commitment to France’s creative community. This includes over 20 French productions by 2020.
Home to 40 employees in film, TV, and marketing, and capable of housing 100 more employees, the new office is a sign of the streaming company’s intent in one of Europe’s most important and heavily regulated markets.
Reflecting the varied tastes of Netflix subscribers in France as well as the 158 million+ subscribers around the world, Netflix has, since its launch in France last 2014, developed 24 French titles, including 3 documentaries, 9 films, 9 series, 5 stand-up shows, and 1 unscripted series.
The Streaming service’s French executives unveiled several original shows to be produced by Netflix in the coming years as well as a range of films and series made by production partners for Netflix. They include:
- BigBug, the new film by César Award Winner Jean-Pierre Jeunet, based on a script written by Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant — a comedy set in the future with a cast including César Award Winner Elsa Zylberstein, César Award Nominee Isabelle Nanty, and Manu Payet.
- Fanny Herrero, the hugely admired screenwriter, is developing a 6-part series following the lives of four young comedians trying to make it in the Paris stand-up scene.
- The renewal (Season 2) of the original YA Sci-fi series Mortel, created by Frederic Garcia.
- Sentinelle, an action-packed film starring Olga Kurylenko, directed by Julien Leclercq (Braqueurs and La Terre et le Sang).
This comes on the back of a range of original shows already announced for 2020:
- Arsène Lupin, starring Omar Sy, and created by George Kay in collaboration with François Uzan. The first three episodes will be directed by Louis Leterrier.
- La Révolution, a historical thriller series created by Aurélien Molas.
- The Eddy, Damien Chazelle’s series created by Jack Thorne, that reunites Leïla Bekhti and Tahar Rahim.
- Vampires, starring Oulaya Amamra and Suzanne Clément, and created by Benjamin Dupas and Isaure Pisani-Ferry.
- Two documentaries, one about Nicolas Anelka, developed by Franck Nataf, and the other featuring Maître Gims, directed by Florent Bodin.
Netflix also announced a series of partnerships with major French creative institutions. Netflix’s aim on the partnerships is to support new voices and to increase diversity in the creative community. Those partnerships include:
- Strengthening Netflix’s existing partnership with La Fémis by supporting their ‘Residency’ programme, an 11-month full-time training course that helps young people from disadvantaged backgrounds get into film and TV.
- 1000 visages, an association founded in 2006 by Houda Benyamina, which provides a number of training programmes in film and promotes access to jobs within the creative industries. Netflix will become the main partner in the programme dedicated to series’ screenwriting, to be launched in January 2020. Houda Benyamina is also the director of two episodes of The Eddy.
- Since 2019, Netflix has partnered with GOBELINS L’École de l’Image, giving one graduate every year the opportunity to work alongside Netflix’s animation experts in Japan. In addition, Netflix will now contribute to Gobelins’ training program by funding four-year scholarships for five students as part of their Master of Arts in “Character Animation and Animated Filmmaking”.
With additional reports from: Reuters, Netflix Media Center, DEADLINE,
Photo Courtesy: New York Post, ZIMBIO, Reuters
