30/01/2007

Thomas Gilou’s Michou d'Auber [+see also:
trailer
film profile], starring Nathalie Baye and Gerard Depardieu, will be out on French screens on February 28.

The film is one of many EuropaCorp productions announced yesterday by Luc Besson, who was in Rome to present Arthur and the Invisibles [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (being released on February 9 by 01 on 350 screens).

The director told Cineuropa that “Michou d'Auber is a very beautiful and delicate story on an Arab boy’s integration in rural France of the 1950s, where everyone is a racist. So much so that his mother dyes his hair blond. His foster mother, in order to help the boy be accepted, decides to hide his origins by dying his hair blond”.

Future EuropaCorp productions include Ruby Tuesday, an animated film co-produced by Mick Jagger’s Jagged Films . The singer will voice of one of the main characters and the soundtrack will feature a dozen or so Rolling Stones songs.

"I believe very much in this project, which will be directed by brothers Paul and Gaetan Brizzi (Fantasia 2000)". The film tells the story of a single mother in search of happiness in New York. It is set for a 2008 release.

Another animated film on the company’s slate is Un Monstre a Paris, the new film by Paris-born director Eric "Bibo" Bergeron, who is returning to Europe after having worked at Dreamworks in the US: "For once, a European animator is taking the reverse path", said a satisfied Besson.

However, the projects of the company of the director of Nikita do not end here. In one week shooting will begin on Taken, a thriller directed by Pierre Morel, in which Liam Neeson plays a former soldier whose daughter is kidnapped while traveling alone through Europe in order to be sold into white slavery. Besson co-wrote the screenplay.

Lastly, Besson was asked to confirm a co-production starring US actor Vin Diesel, a big screen version of the highly popular videogame Hitman. "No, Vin Diesel will not be in it. I agreed to work with Fox because it’s a film that will be shot in Europe and will thus offer many Europeans a chance to work. It will be directed by Xavier Gens, whose debut film Frontieres I produced. Xavier has enormous talent and EuropaCorp is used to placing its trust in young directors: we produce between three to five debut films a year".

(Translated from Italian)