French producer Dimitri Rassam is having fun with a high-profile Cannes Movie Competition as producer of Competitors title Limonov: The Ballad and The Rely Of Monte Cristo, which scored a rousing 12-minute ovation at its Out of Competitors debut.
“It’s my first movie in Competitors, it has been an amazing journey,” says Rassam, who’s a producer on Limonov below his Paris-based Chapter 2 banner, alongside Italy’s Lorenzo Gangarossa, Mario Gianani and Ilya Stewart.
Rassam isn’t any stranger to the Cannes purple carpet having frequently accompanied his actress mom Carole Bouquet in his early 20s, earlier than mounting the competition’s famed steps in his personal proper because the producer of The Little Prince and co-producer of L’Immensità.
Cinema can also be in his blood on his paternal facet by means of his late producer father Jean-Pierre Rassam, and uncle Paul Rassam, the long-time good friend and collaborator of Francis Ford Coppola who has lent his help to the director’s $120M ardour challenge Megalopolis, which can also be in Competitors this yr.
Rassam will undoubtedly be relieved by the enthusiastic viewers response to The Rely of Monte Cristo in addition to the sturdy opinions, with Deadline reviewer Pete Hammond declaring it “among the finest movies” he had seen this Cannes.
The $46M film is Rassam’s third huge price range Alexandre Dumas adaptation in lower than two years after €60M ($73M) duology The Three Musketeers – D’Artagnan and The Three Musketeers – Milady.
Co-written by Matthieu Delaporte and Alexandre de La Patellière and directed by Martin Bourboulon, the swashbuckling Musketeer dramas gathered a starry A-list French and European forged, topped by François Civil, Eva Inexperienced, Vicky Krieps, Vincent Cassel, Lyna Khoudri, Louis Garrel, Romain Duris and Pio Marmaï.
All three Dumas variations have been performed in collaboration with French studio Pathé, which bankrolled and produced the productions and likewise dealt with the theatrical launch in France and worldwide gross sales.
The Musketeer movies have been launched in April and December 2023, reaching $26M and $19.5M on the French field workplace respectively.
Rassam is refreshingly candid concerning the reality he’s not wholly happy with the field workplace end result for the Musketeer movies, even when he’s happy with the standard of the manufacturing.
“It’s an attention-grabbing train to have a look at the efficiency of a film, even within the case of success, by way of what have been the aims, the efficiency, the areas the place we are able to be taught and enhance upon,” he says. “There’s a saying of Churchill that I like: ‘Success isn’t closing, failure isn’t deadly. It’s the braveness to proceed that counts.’”
“Within the case of Musketeers movies, when you have a look at it objectively, by sure metrics, it’s successful, after which by others, it didn’t solely obtain what we hoped. The movies carried out rather well on the 50-plus demographic, because the primary, quantity two, most seen motion pictures, even above American motion pictures,” he continues.
“However sadly, which is extra problematic, we didn’t carry out as nicely with the under-50 demographic. On the take a look at screenings, they favored it simply as a lot because the 50-Plus demographic, however the actuality is, we didn’t get them to purchase tickets. That’s extra of an existential problem for French cinema.”
Internationally, each photos offered nicely, and whereas no purchaser is out of pocket, having sealed offers with native broadcasters and platforms, there was disappointment over their theatrical efficiency.
“I feel a part of the explanation… is that the youthful demographic, which we hoped would have a look at the film as a possible blockbuster, or no less than, as an leisure film first, couldn’t fairly establish the place the film sits,” says Rassam
“In our present atmosphere being a overseas language film that doesn’t sit clearly in a single advertising proposal is difficult. If we had been a really auteur slash typical Cannes film, we’d have been positioned extra clearly for an viewers that has a behavior of going to see these motion pictures in native language. We ended up being in between.”
Monte Cristo Aspirations
The brand new The Rely of Monte Cristo film reunites Rassam with Delaporte and de La Patellière, who take co-writing and co-directing credit.
Rassam is anticipating a special reception for The Rely of Monte Cristo, partially due to the presence within the lead position of Pierre Niney, who has a robust social media presence and inter-generational enchantment.
He’s joined by rising younger actors Anamaria Vartolomei, who comes with the added kudos of being a Chanel ambassadress, and Vassili Schneider, alongside established names Laurent Lafitte, Anaïs Demoustier and Italy’s Pierfrancesco Favino.
The movie will launch in France on greater than 700 screens on June 28, having been pushed ahead from an initially introduced date of October 23.
“The most important gambit on Monte Cristo and its launch date is that we’re positioning it as a solution for the scarcity of American tentpoles this summer season (because of the Hollywood strikes). That is new territory in that very massive French motion pictures are usually not launched in the summertime,” explains Rassam.
“As I discussed we needed to get that youthful demographic . They’re on holidays for 9 straight weeks… we’ve examined the film and it’s off the charts throughout the board however the demo that assessments the most effective is the 15 to 24 bracket however I do not know whether or not or not they’re going to point out up.”
On the worldwide distribution entrance, Rassam reveals the manufacturing has devised a hybrid technique following conversations with patrons.
“We ended up formatting the Musketeers as a six-part mini sequence format, that our distributors have all obtained. The concept was given to us by Nordisk, the Scandinavian distributor of the movies. They informed us, ‘We don’t essentially wish to select now how we’re going to use the films however it might be useful to us have the films in that format’,” says Rassam.
“It’s precisely the identical edit but it surely so occurs that these motion pictures have been 4 hours in period in complete and lent themselves completely to a six-episode format. We did it throughout post-production for the Musketeers, and factored it in from the get-go on Monte Cristo. We realized that we would have liked to be agnostic when it got here to reaching audiences outdoors of France.
“Our companions nonetheless like theatrical as a technique to construct consciousness across the film with the press however by way of residual TV worth, we have to give them a software equipment to correctly exploit the image, taking into consideration that it’s a French-language interval film. Monte Cristo, is by far the most effective manufacturing we’ve performed, however my job isn’t to be a fan of my image, my job is to determine an equilibrium between what companions are investing and the place the market is at, and the fact is that it’s a really polarized market.”
Rassam means that Dumas’s writing with its common cliff-hanger moments meant The Rely of Monte Cristo lent itself nicely to be being reformatted into six components.
Rassam says the making of the Dumas variations has nonetheless been a worthwhile course of, not least as a result of many technicians labored throughout all three movies and this has resulted within the creation of an especially environment friendly and high-level crew.
He notes that lots of the crew members are actually connected to Bourboulon’s subsequent movie, the Afghanistan evacuation drama In The Hell Of Kabul: 13 Days, 13 Nights, which started taking pictures in Morocco on Might 20.
Set in opposition to the backdrop of the withdrawal from Afghanistan of U.S. troops in August, 2021 because the Taliban march on Kabul, the movie recounts the true story of French Commander Mohamed Bida, who oversaw safety on the French embassy, the final Western mission to stay open.
On the idea of his experiences with the Dumas-inspired interval motion pictures, Rassam is considering a transfer into English-language productions.
He would love Bourboulon to accompany him on this journey, suggesting that the director has what it takes to grow to be France’s subsequent Jean-Jacques Annaud, who wooed worldwide audiences with movies like The Title Of The Rose and Seven Years In Tibet.
“What I’m making an attempt to get on the market, which is why I wish to be candid about our expertise on the Musketeers, is that we have to be lucid, whereas remaining formidable,” says Rassam. “After we did the analysis into the Musketeer motion pictures it was as a result of I needed to grasp why the youthful demographic didn’t present up, despite the fact that on the take a look at, they beloved the film. The reply is notion and putting in a brand new notion takes time.
“I feel it’s our duty to have a look at the market… We’re not going to do immediately get younger audiences to shift their notion of French motion pictures or their notion of casts, or their behavior of consuming content material,” he continues.
“So we are able to both determine to determine new methods of reaching them. Or you may add by way of viability. Merely put, if we have been to make a film of that scope with worldwide forged will we really feel like there’s a really vital market viability, our conviction is sure.”
As The Rely of Monte Cristo, the ultimate film within the Dumas manufacturing cycle, takes off, Rassam is trying to his subsequent step.
