“Amelie” and “The Intouchables,” two of France’s all-time biggest box office hits, will be re-released by their respective studios, UGC and Gaumont/Studiocanal, during the Olympic Games.
With three to four million Olympics fans expected to descend on Paris during the Olympics, French studios are looking to capitalize on the presence of these floods of international visitors and lure them into air-conditioned theaters.
These re-released movies will be subtitled in English which will mark a first in France, at least in recent history.
“The Intouchables,” a 2009 comedy starring Omar Sy as a street-smart caretaker working for a quadriplegic aristocrat, will be re-released by Gaumont and Studiocanal. Sy, who delivered a breakthrough performance in the movie, won a Cesar Award for best actor, becoming the first French Black actor to win such prize in the country. The actor went on to star in “Lupin,” the hit Netflix series.
Directed by Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, the film became France’s second-highest grossing local film of all time (after “Welcome to the Sticks“), grossing $426 million worldwide, and more than $10 million Stateside, where the Weinstein Co. released it.
Although Gaumont was the initial distributor of the film in France, the rights to the movie remained with the production company, Quad Films, which eventually sold its library to Studiocanal in 2018. As such, Studiocanal will be collaborating with Gaumont to re-release the movie this summer on approximately 300 screens in the Paris area.
“Amelie,” meanwhile, will be released on a similar number of screens by UGC on July 24 to “benefit from the presence of American and Asian visitors,” said a source close to the French studio. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, “Amelie” has become cult and remains to this day one of the top-grossing French films in the U.S.. The comedy romance, starring Audrey Tautou has a whimsical young waitress who sets off to help people find happiness, took over $33 million in the U.S. and $173.9 million worldwide.
Kicking off on July 26, the Olympics will be holding outdoor ceremonies and competitions at iconic Parisian landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, Versailles Palace and Place de la Concorde.
UGC, which owns one of the largest cinema circuits in Paris, is expecting to be impacted by the Olympic Games as several theaters belonging to its chain are located in Olympic sites, but it’s decided to stay open nevertheless. “We still have that trauma for the pandemic. Shutting down a theater and reopening it is a nightmare, so we won’t ever do that again!” said a source close to the company. UGC, however, did close one of its best known Parisian venue, the UGC Normandie cinema on the Champs-Élysées, due to the skyrocketing rents and weak ticket sales.
Source Agencies
