To seduce the French market, the platform announced the launch of two series : One of spying, the other comic, located in the 1960s.

Espionage, action, love, adventure, humor and comedy: this is the classic and multivitamin cocktail proposed by Amazon Prime Video who announced, during his great Parisian meeting on Thursday (11/07), the launch of four new French programs planned in 2020 and 2021. No big surprises, but the wish to bring new content and accelerate its investments in French creation. The European headquarters of the platform stresses with seriousness that “French spectators really like new, authentic and entertaining stories in which they can really end up“. Declaration of circumstance, and agreed, the need “to satisfy this expectation by producing a creations program as diversified as possible of French content“, according to Georgia Brown, European Director of Prime Video’s Amazon Originals series. We will understand that the strategy of “Think global, act local” is the watchword of the American platform in its conquest of the global market, in general, and in France particularly. Priority, according to Jennifer Salke, the global leader of Amazon Studios: “quality” rather than “volume“.

So what’s new to hook up its subscribers and seduce others? First, Voltaire, a comedy drama that takes place in the 1960s in Paris, Voltaire high school which opens its doors to young girls and shyly inaugurates the coeducation. “It’s a shock!” Sums up the screenwriter and showrunner Marie Roussin (author of Les Bracelets Rouges, Un Village Français, Borgia ), which follows his characters and the evolution of French society from 1963 to 1968. Currently in pre production, the series will be broadcast in 2021.

 

Idem for Operations Totems , spy series that takes place in 1964, during the cold war. The showrunner Olivier Dujols, passed by the “Le bureau des légendes” of Eric Rochant, promises “a cocktail of action and love” in the France of De Gaulle, at the time of SDECEE (the ancestor of the DGSE (General Directorate of External Security)) and the conquest of space between Russians and Americans. We follow the adventures of two agents torn between their mission and their feelings. This series of eight episodes was created and written with four hands by Juliette Soubrier and Olivier Dujols, and produced by the French team of Gaumont.

Another project planned next year, The Missing One, an “XXL” adventure race through Australia in which teams of three French celebrities will have to find one of their members hidden in a secret place. Among the star participants announced: the rappers Bigflo and Oli, the footballers Robert Pirès, Marcel Desailly and Emmanuel Petit, the basketball player Tony Parker and many others. Besides the production of an exclusive project with Orelsan (current in 2020), the platform provides for the distribution also exclusive several comedy shows, including My Story by Ary Abittan (December 15, 2019), the So Chic! Montreux Comedy Festival, presented by Alex Vizorek and bringing together the French stars of stand-up (25 December 2019) and Nothing to lose, by Fabrice Éboué. Finally, to reassure millions of fans of J. R. R. Tolkien, the production of the series of The Lord of the Rings has started well, and season 1 should be broadcast in 2021.