Renowned character actor and Academy Award nominee Gerard Depardieu is heading to Netflix.
The French actor will star in Marseille, “tale of power, corruption and redemption set against the rich backdrop of the French port city.”
Marseille is Netflix’s first French production. It’s shot entirely in France and will be entirely in French.
Depardieu will play Robert Taro, mayor of the city for 25 years. The coming elections have him face the man he chose as his heir, an ambitious youngster aiming high. Both candidates will fight mercilessly. Marseille stages a fight around revenge, animated by drug lords, politicians, unions and the political players of the city.
“Marseille is an ambitious, diabolically smart fictitious exploration of local politics in one of the worlds most vibrant and fascinating cities.,” said Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos. ”We are delighted to be working with some of the best storytellers in France to deliver a series that erases the line between film and television.”
It comes to you from Carlos screenwriter Dan Franck.
“Creating a series for an enormous audience and without any constraints will let us push to its limits a story about the Shakespearean theater of politics in a city where Alexandre Dumas and Jean-Claude Izzo, among others, have planted many spears,” said Dan Franck when the series was announced. “Netflix has given us a blank page to create a “House of Cards” in French that breaks through unspoken hypocrisy. This is a writer’s dream and a great opportunity for French producers and creators to enter a new world.”
Marseille is an eight episode series and will hit Netflix next year (it was pushed back from a late 2015 original release date).