05/11/2003

After more than 10 years of fruitful collaboration with StudioCanal, the producer Alain Sarde is moving on to pastures new and will be hooking up with Pathé to produce the new film directed by Danièle Thomspon, Fauteuil d’orchestre.

StudioCanal’s new film strategy was announced during the last Cannes Film Festival by Frédéric Sichler, has led to a legal break in the collaboration with its three affiliated French producers (Les Films Alain Sarde, Richard Grandpierre and Eskwad, Alain Goldman and Légende Entreprises). Now that the three companies are no longer in this partnership they have had to reduce the number of projects taken on and find new partners for their productions.
Alain Sarde’s has chosen to play on the strength of the actors and the director Danièle Thompson for his first project outside the StudioCanal ambit. The director’s first two feature length films Season's Beatings (1999) and Jet Lag (2002) did well at the French box office (with respective audiences reaching 1.4 and 1.05 million) and also had good results abroad. The filmmaker is the daughter of the screenwriter and director, Gérard Oury, and she is now in the second phase of writing Fauteuil d’orchestre, which should be filmed and released in cinemas before the end of 2004. In choosing Pathé as a production partner, Les Films Alain Sarde is able to provide the necessary means for this project. In fact, Jet Lag had a budget of €13 million and Danièle Thompson is a specialist in putting together a cast filled with real national film stars: her films have featured big names like Emmanuelle Béart, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Sabine Azema and Juliette Binoche without forgetting actors like Jean Reno and Jean-Pierre Darroussin.

(Translated from French)