04/05/2005

Les Brigades du Tigre, a cult French TV series produced from 1974 to 1983, is about to conquer the big screen. The cast, gathered by producer Manuel Munz, is very fancy ; it includes Clovis Cornillac, Stefano Accorsi, Olivier Gourmet, Jacques Gamblin, Thierry Lhermitte, Gérard Jugnot and Diane Kruger. This film, which is Jérôme Cornuau’s fourth feature, will start shooting from mid-July to mid-October near Paris ; it will depict the adventures of a special police unit created in 1907 by Head of Government Georges Clemenceau (aka The Tiger). These untouchables, especially the main protagonists, Valentin (Clovis Cornillac), Terrasson (Olivier Gourmet), and Pujol (not yet chosen), helped by a young officer (Stefano Accorsi) and supervised by Inspector Faivre (Gérard Jugnot), fight against criminal organisations with the then-modern means (De Dion Bouton and then Panhard Levassor limousines, telegraph, telephone, fingerprints...), which included a full physical training involving a lot of French boxing.

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The adventures shown in the TV series written by Claude Desailly were turned into a script by partners-in-crime Fabien Nury and Xavier Dorison. This being a period film set in 1912, all the typical elements of the early 20th Century will be there : gangsters in black cars, anarchists and violent groups like ‘la bande à Bonnot’, financial scandals (the Russian loans affair) and the threat of a World War. This €19M movie produced by Les Films Manuel Munz promises to be one of the best catches amongst all the French projects presented at the Film Market in Cannes. International sales are handled by TF1 International. Its French distributor is TFM.

(Translated from French)