News

Le Film Français - News from Cannes Festival - May 14th, 2004

Du Pontavice signs a 40 million Euro "pacte" for Gans' Rahan!

Christophe Gans will shot “Rahan” in Canada, produced by Marc du Pontavice for 40 million Euros with SND as distributor…

A story that takes place, 25 000 years ago, in a not attractive Europe, with actors talking a protolanguage? This is the challenge Christophe Gans accepts for one of the most ambitious movies of the year: “Rahan”. After the international success of "Le Pacte des Loups" (Brotherhood of the wolf), the film director comes back with the adaptation of the famous comic by Lecureux and Chéret. Mark Dacascos, seen in “Le Pacte des Loups”, will play the main character.

Producer Marc du Pontavice bought the rights three years ago, already thinking of Christophe Gans back then. Gans is now preparing the movie for several months already, free from his project about Bob Morane, another comic hero, which was definitively cancelled last summer.

"Written by Jean-François Henry and Christophe Gans, the script follows the comic spirit: the first part tells Rahan's childhood. He is then rejected by his tribe. The next part is about his quest about his identity. Only an important female character has been added to the comic", Marc du Pontavice tells. The script promises adventures, mythology, emotions and love story. "The comic has a very strong mythological dimension. Prehistory is a pretext to revisit the big founder myths of humanity, at the same time Greek, biblical and Freudian. It is a wild and basic movie, an atmosphere movie, with an aesthetic close to documentary", the producer says.

Preproduction started last November. In order to keep credibility, an important work about this period has been done, the team is even working with a paleontology company for the elaboration of the protolanguage the actors will use. Besides, the producer will bring in the experience in animation he got with “Xilam”, the company he runs, for the special effects, which are important in the movie. The spectacular sceneries needed for the movie, close to prehistorical Europe, were found in Canada. Shooting will start next October for five months. The movie was totally storyboarded by two specialists Pascal Morelli (director of Corto Maltese) and Thierry Ségur.

The project brought, from its first presentation at the last "MIFED" last November, enthusiasm among foreign buyers from more than 20 important countries for already 17 million Euros. Daniel Marquet, former member of StudioCanal, who now created his own company, Groupe One, handles the international trade.

Marc du Pontavice produces the movie with his own company “Les Films du Gorak” for 40 million Euros. Canada, with distributor Alliance Atlantis and the recourse to local tax supply, is a partner for 5 million Euros. The same amount was raised in Great Britain with a Sale and Lease back. 12 million Euros are brought by France. SND, that came in for 3.5 million Euros, will distribute the movie in France during the first semester of 2006.

French article by Sarah Drouhaud

Le Film Français - News from Cannes Festival - May 13th, 2004

“Wild Bunch” takes "the Nomad" and signs for Carax and Tanovic

Vincent Maraval starts the sales of “The Nomad”, (the big Kazakh epic for 35 million dollars) a big 35 million dollar Kazakh epic and of "Emporor's journey" a fiction documentary about Antarctic penguins.

At the last moment four movies joined the line up of “Wild Bunch”, that already sold world wide movies such as "Life is a miracle" by Emir Kusturica, “Farenheit 9 -11” by Michael Moore, or the last Godard, Argento, Desplechin…

Four productions, all different from the topics and from the authors, from Leos Carax to Danis Tanovic, via a documentary about penguins, in the line of "le peuple migrateur".

The most ambitious project in production terms (35 million dollars) and the most advanced as half of the shooting is already done: “The Nomad” by Yvan Passer, the director who won an Emmy Award for “Staline”. Five minutes will be shown on Sunday at the market. "The movie, totally financed by Kazakhstan, tells the story of the country, through the exceptional destiny of a child who became the incarnation of the free Kazakh people through the years. It is a big epic movie, and we already have seen 1h10 not edited, but already totally staggering", Vincent Maraval says.

French article by Sophie Dacbert

Allo-Ciné - Shootings - August 25th, 2003

Mark Dacascos in Rahan's role?
Hero of Christophe Gans' first two feature films, Mark Dacascos would be once more part of the director's next two movies: "The Adventurer" and "Rahan".

Mark Dacascos in the role of the wild-ages son? The idea seems any case to interest his fetish director, Christophe Gans, who had directed him in his first two feature films, "Crying Freeman" and "Brotherhood of the Wolves". In a short interview given to Studio Magazine, the cineaste declares: "Mark Dacascos will be Rahan; I see nobody else for this role. The movie will be entirely in prehistoric dialogues. Iceland would be, in my opinion, a perfect shooting location".

Technology and "savoir-faire" at the service of a big French production
Adaptation of the famous comic strip by Roger Lécureux (who died three years ago) and André Chéret, "Rahan" should mix real shots and computer generated images, and will be produced by Eskwad and Xilam Animation. Answering the Lécureux / Chéret tandem's expectation, who had asked for a program able to satisfy the fans, but also the general audience, this last company –already at the origin of the animated series "Lucky Luke" aired on France 3 – made important research investments in order to develop a quality 3D animation for the new tv series "Rahan", expected in 2004 on the French screens, and whose 52 episodes of 26 minutes are right now in preparation. Efforts that will be all benefit for the coming feature movie "Rahan"…

Hitches
Christophe Gans was supposed to be shooting now "The Adventurer", based upon the Bob Morane adventures, novel and then comic strip character created by Henri Vernes in 1953. In this very awaited movie, Mark Dacascos, recently starring in "Cradle to the Grave", would slip into the role of the Yellow Shadow, the emblematic bad guy of the comic strip opposed to the hero played by Billy Crudup. Initially planned in China, the shooting of "The Adventurer" was stopped because of the SARS epidemic (see article below), and the production keeps now the highest secret on the announced restart of the shooting, the director trying to find replacement solutions in order to shoot at the beginning of 2004. The "Rahan" project would be postponed to 2005 so, at best.