EXCLUSIVE: Fred Cavayé is gearing up for the shoot this summer time of his adaptation of Les Misérables.
Vincent Lindon is about to star as Jean Valjean reverse Tahar Rahim as his nemesis Inspector Javert, with the ensemble forged additionally together with Camille Cottin, Noémie Merlant and Benjamin Lavernhe.
The literary costume drama marks a departure for Cavayé who broke out as a director with 2008 thriller Something for Her (Pour Elle), starring Lindon as a person on a mission to free his spouse (Diane Kruger) from jail after she is arrested for homicide, and he’s satisfied of her innocence.
The film was remade in English in 2010 as The Subsequent Three Days with Russell Crowe and Elizabeth Banks within the starring roles.
Since then, Cavayé has additionally made his identify as a comedy director on movies corresponding to Dany Boon-starrer Penny Pincher! (Radin!) and Nothing to Disguise, the French model of Italian hit Good Strangers, earlier than shifting into extra critical territory in 2021 with World Battle Two drama Farewell, Mr. Haffmann.
Hugo’s epic literary basic set towards the backdrop of the social and political turmoil of post-revolutionary France has impressed greater than 45 characteristic movie variations to this point.
Cavayé is promising a brand new interpretation revolving round redeemed parole-breaker Jean Valjean’s bid to maintain out of the clutches of Inspector Javert, which additionally provides a voice to hitherto secondary feminine characters corresponding to Madame Thénardier (Cottin) and Fantine (Merlant).
The director talked to Deadline as Studiocanal launches gross sales on the variation in Cannes.
DEADLINE: Les Misérables marks fairly a departure from the sorts of movies you’re normally related to…
CAVAYÉ: I already did a dressing up drama with Farewell, Mr. Haffmann, which was set within the Nineteen Forties, however that is in a really completely different vein. I’ve been dreaming of constructing a giant literary, costume drama for a very long time, and notably Les Misérables.
My level of departure is that I began my profession making motion thrillers, earlier than shifting into comedies. I needed to get again to creating thrillers however didn’t wish to repeat what I had achieved on my previous thrillers, specifically inform a narrative about an unusual man who finds himself caught up in a unprecedented journey.
In the course of the Covid lockdown, I re-read Les Misérables, which is already an endeavour as a result of it’s greater than 2,000 pages lengthy. I spotted it could possibly be a manner of getting again to issues I wish to do once more in that there was scope to make a model of Les Misérables that could possibly be near The Fugitive [the 1993 film in which Harrison Ford plays a man who goes on the run after he is wrongly accused of killing his wife, with Tommy Lee Jones in hot pursuit as a US marshal].
DEADLINE: So, it’s going to be an motion movie?
CAVAYÉ: The movie will retain the literary, dramatic facet, the depth of the characters, and the social points on the coronary heart of the story, which sadly stay more and more related to do as we speak. However there’s a side of the novel, which finally makes it an journey story, albeit with depth.
I wish to ramp that up in a manner which has by no means actually been highlighted in different variations. The movie will stay true to Victor Hugo’s novel, similtaneously slipping in thriller codes and dynamics, corresponding to a chase scene when Valjean steals the loaf of bread.
DEADLINE: The occasions within the novel happen from the late 1790s as much as simply past the Paris Rebellion of 1832, how are you going to take care of this in your adaptation?
CAVAYÉ: That was one of many large challenges. It’s a narrative going down over a number of intervals, from when Valjean is round 20 to when he dies at round 60 years outdated… so it spans 40 years.
A method of coping with the timespan in a characteristic movie would have been to deal with a specific interval. As a substitute, I’ve expanded the timeframe, drawing on threads within the novel, to enter the childhood backstories of among the characters corresponding to Javert, for instance, to clarify their actions in a while.
My rising love for TV sequence, which I now watch simply as a lot as movies, has actually shifted the best way I strategy writing. Seven or eight years in the past, I’d have tackled a narrative very otherwise.
I’ve written the screenplay a bit like a sequence, in order that that the characters initially inform their tales from a number of factors of view, and these factors of view will ultimately discover themselves in the identical place, on the identical time, exactly for the motion to start, for higher or for worse. It’s a tool that works nicely in sequence and I’ve tried to use it right here, to create a contemporary adaptation of Les Misérables that’s very completely different from what’s already been achieved.
DEADLINE: Les Misérables will observe within the wake of the massive Dimitri-Rassam-produced French-language literary variations The Three Musketeers duology, directed by Martin Bourboulon in addition to The Depend of Monte-Cristo by Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte. Will you be aiming for a similar degree of manufacturing worth and scope?
CAVAYÉ: Firstly, I ought to say that if The Depend of Monte-Cristo hadn’t been such successful, I’d most likely have had lots of moretrouble getting this movie off the bottom. Its success proved to folks that one of these movie can attraction to audiences.
The Depend of Monte-Cristo and The Three Musketeers additionally set the bar very excessive, and we’ll be aiming to match that, with related budgets, however with a special kind of story, to make a mainstream widespread and spectacular movie, which, like the sooner movies in my profession, has audiences on the sting of their seats.
DEADLINE: The characteristic is produced by Richard Grandpierre at Eskwad Productions (The Tuche Household franchise, Massive Bug, Brotherhood of the Wolf) and Olivier Delbosc at Curiosa Movies (The Quiet Son, Of Blood and Cash). How did that come collectively?
CAVAYÉ: Olivier Delbosc produced my first movie, Something for Her, whereas it’s the primary time I’m working with Richard Grandpierre. It’s fairly humorous the way it all took place. As I mentioned earlier than, throughout lockdown, I re-read Les Misérables. I then wrote a 25-page synopsis explaining how I envisaged my adaptation.
I referred to as my agent, who had no thought I had been engaged on an adaptation. She mentioned, “Only a week in the past, Richard Grandpierre and Vincent Lindon informed me they want to do Les Misérables”. I referred to as them and informed them that I additionally needed to do an adaptation. I already know Vincent nicely as we’ve labored on two movies collectively… which helped pace issues up too.
DEADLINE: What sort of finances are you working with and whom have you ever financed it?
CAVAYÉ: It’s across the identical as The Depend of Monte-Cristo and The Musketeers, €37 million ($41M). Studiocanal is financing with TF1, Netflix and Canal +, which all know that you should put the suitable assets into this form of movie.
DEADLINE: When and the place are you going to shoot?
CAVAYÉ: We’re taking pictures from July 21 to November 10 in Paris and Bordeaux. It’s very troublesome to search out areas in Paris, little or no of pre-1850 Paris stays intact after Haussmann’s transformation of the town, whereas there are bits of Bordeaux that may cross for Paris in that interval
