StudioCanal Throws Down: Lit Hits, Gen Z Bait & U.S. Buyers

As the sun beats down on Cannes and the Croisette hums with the usual frenzy of stars, screenings and deal chatter, StudioCanal is making one of the festival market’s louder statements: big English-language swings, serious literary IP and a comedy thriller practically engineered to make Gen Z argue. I talk to StudioCanal’s chief commercial officer Anne Chérel below about how the very French company is going global.

But first!

Though talk along the Croisette is dominated by all things cinema, the small screen is having a moment too — with not just one but two TV projects filming here amid the madness of the festival. I can reveal that Netflix’s long-awaited Call My Agent! movie — featuring the original French cast — is here, vying alongside HBO’s The White Lotus to get their shots of the Grand Palais red steps late at night, after the glitzy evening premieres have wrapped.

Mike White’s globetrotting hotel drama is set to begin shooting after the film fest packs up, but it makes sense that producers want to take full advantage of the paparazzi and throngs of film fans swarming the screenings and hotels like the Carlton and Martinez while they’re still here. 

I was at the Carlton earlier today for Kering’s Women in Motion power lunch, hosted by chairman François-Henri Pinault (who also owns — through his family’s investment company, Artémis — a majority stake in CAA). The French billionaire appeared chummy with Mediawan boss Pierre-Antoine Capton, whose media empire includes Brad Pitt‘s Plan B and Slow Horses maker See-Saw Films. Seeing the pair together certainly brings home how dominant French players have become in Hollywood and Europe.

Meanwhile, it took a hot minute, but looks like Cannes has its first breakout hit in Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid. The IG persona-turned-actor-director’s debut feature about a washed-up nightlife promoter premiered in Un Certain Regard on Friday night to breathless reviews and genuine excitement about a fresh, new voice in independent cinema.

Katey Rich was at the hot ticket after-party, where regulars from the queer nightlife scene in Marseilles had been bused in to help tear up the dance floor (smoke machine and all!). People actually dancing at a premiere party is way rarer than it ought to be, but the dance floor was too big for most to resist.

Club Kid — being sold by UTA and French sales agent Charades — is still looking for distribution, but for many partygoers, it was virtually a foregone conclusion that A24 is the spiritual fit for the movie. Ashley Cullins hears every buyer worth their salt was at the market screening Friday night. And with this much heat around it, it’s tipped to be one of the fest’s first big deals (though whether or not that’s announced in France is another question). Firstman was due to join one of our Croisette Conversations today, but his team had to reschedule him — with many gracious apologies — so perhaps talks are heating up already. Club Kid star Diego Calva still made it to our studio, and we’ll have his interview with Katey here tomorrow.  

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StudioCanal Makes a Splash

Another hot project whetting buyers’ appetites is the comedy thriller Everybody Wants to Fuck Me from StudioCanal, which stars Taron Egerton as a “performative male” lothario (yes, there will be tote bags) who gets a taste of his own medicine. It’s one of a pair of big English-language projects for the French powerhouse (the other two are The Midnight Library and Rupert Murdoch biopic Ink), which — in addition to five films in competition — has one of its most ambitious, high-stakes slates to date this year.

I sat down with StudioCanal’s chief commercial officer Anne Chérel in the company’s swanky suite at the Majestic overlooking the Palais, where the veteran detailed the studio’s festival strategy and shared key insights about where global dealmaking is headed amid the disruptions rattling the film world.

“Having three big English-speaking projects being sold at the same time, with all of them having very big potential, and not necessarily all being for the same buyers, is really ambitious,” Chérel tells me. “The idea for us is to do more and more of these big projects.”