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Bloomberg

French film producer Dimitri Rassam was destined to make movies.
The son of Bond girl Carole Bouquet – whose role in 1990’s Too Beautiful for You saw her pick up a best actress award from France’s César Awards – and French film producer Jean-Pierre Rassam, he has been immersed in cinema since birth. Francis Ford Coppola is his godfather.
In 2024, Rassam’s The Count of Monte Cristo was one of the top-grossing films in France. Now, he has big plans to produce global blockbusters in English, with a French twist.
Rassam, 43, is on a quest to produce a costly medieval saga based on The Accursed Kings, a French novel series that inspired Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin.
The films are set to be shot in English with an all-star international cast, designed to appeal to a global audience.
It is probably the riskiest movie project out of France since Luc Besson’s €197 million (US$222 million) science fiction flop Valerian in 2017.

The production, still at its financing stage, comes at a tricky time for Hollywood, which is grappling with post-pandemic and post-writers-strike blues.
The superheroes genre, its engine for years, is tired. Disney is experiencing a cultural crisis, while box-office bombs like Warner’s Mickey 17 are dissuading bold bets.
US President Donald Trump has complicated matters with comments that films shot outside the United States would face 100 per cent tariffs. The industry relies on international collaborations and shoot locations, so the benefits of such a proposal to US filmmakers are far from clear.
While some international filmmakers have expressed fears about how tariffs could hit their business, Rassam is bullish. French cinema has been recovering, with ticket sales increasing in 2024, while in the US and UK they declined.
“It’s a moment of opportunity, because there is this turbulence,” Rassam says, noting that US studios are making fewer movies and are more risk-averse as production budgets creep up.
Daniel Loria, editorial director of trade publication Boxoffice Media, says there is a “gap that Hollywood needs to solve” between huge “tent poles” like Top Gun: Maverick, Barbie and Avatar that provides an opportunity for producers like Rassam.

However, the historical genre of Rassam’s project, with its expensive sets and costumes, may be a trickier sell than the art house movies France is known for, Loria adds.
Some previous attempts at making big-budget European movies with international appeal have been categorised by critics as “europudding”, says Huw Jones, film lecturer at the University of Southampton in the UK, using a term for European co-productions that forfeit artistic merit to satisfy bureaucratic agendas for state funding.
One such example, Jones says, is the 2007 film The Last Legion. The star-studded historical action film lost its studio about US$40 million and has a critics’ rating of 15 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, with its dialogue described as “unoriginal, uninspired”.
“Some of those films wanted to work in every market, and ended up working in none,” Jones adds.
Rassam says there is space for what he describes as the best of both worlds: a film adaptation of a French drama of chivalry, betrayal and violence that is universal.
He wants to combine historic settings with European visual-effects know-how, and add American stars and marketing power to make it an international success. The goal is to establish a franchise with several films.
Rassam cites some of Luc Besson’s work, like the 1997 sci-fi The Fifth Element, as a model to emulate. The French-made movie featured a big-name Hollywood star, Bruce Willis, and was made in tight collaboration with US studio Columbia Pictures. It cost about US$90 million to make and grossed US$263 million at the box office.

The first instalment of The Accursed Kings will have a budget of under US$80 million, Rassam says. That is about 16 times more than a typical French film, but cheaper than many movies in Hollywood, which he says has a “film-cost problem”.
He is currently working hard to pull the financing together, travelling back and forth to Los Angeles to speak to a mix of distributors, financiers and actors. He plans to announce more details, including the cast, by the end of the year. He has already raised tens of millions of euros from investors.
The money is being channelled through a European fund called Yapluka, which Rassam set up in January. Yapluka aims to co-produce about three films a year, with budgets up to US$80 million and international partners for each project, ideally in Hollywood.
French producers usually finish a film, then try to sell it abroad. But Rassam knows that without a US marketing plan from the get-go, his projects are unlikely to be global hits. He has appointed Patrick Wachsberger, the former head of Lionsgate and producer of Oscar winners including Coda, to his advisory board to help.
The Accursed Kings is not a story that is known to the American public, so will need US expertise to bring it to market.
“There will be a lot of work, with a marketing campaign to be started as soon as possible, just after the scenario is written,” Wachsberger says. The right cast is also key.
Rassam’s endeavour stems from a French strategy to revive cinema-going after the pandemic, a disaster for an industry that still sees 25 per cent fewer tickets sold than pre-Covid levels worldwide. French production and distribution company Pathé has vowed that spectacular, big-budget films would get the public back in cinemas.
So far, the strategy worked. In 2024, Pathé and Rassam topped the French box-office with Monte Cristo, a €43 million adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ novel, with close to 10 million tickets sold – more than Dune: Part Two or Gladiator II. But the film had limited appeal outside France.


Cinema is considered a national treasure in France, with high levels of public backing, financed by a 10 per cent tax on tickets, incentives for films shot locally, and regulation forcing the likes of Netflix and Apple to produce French-language films.
Public agency Unifrance is charged with promoting French cinema worldwide, while the Cannes Film Festival can propel local films globally. Two of the 10 best movie nominees at the 2025 Oscars – Emilia Peréz and The Substance – had French financing and directors. Flow – a French, Belgian and Latvian co-production – won best animated film.
“If you go to a cinema multiplex in Argentina or Korea, you will see that half of the films are Hollywood movies, 40 per cent are local, and the rest is a mixed bag, but with always one or two French films showing,” says Gilles Renouard, the head of Unifrance.
The success of Monte Cristo, particularly with young cinema-goers, validates Rassam’s approach, Renouard says, adding that the producer has the necessary vision and ambition to echo Besson’s success.
The challenge with Rassam’s new venture is getting US backing while maintaining creative control.
“Where we need to convince them is on our ability to manage editorial,” Rassam says. “The key is to be relevant, not to be seen as contractors.”


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The Accursed Kings, which inspired Game of Thrones, could get its own film saga

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Dimitri Rassam arrives for the screening of Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in France on May 14, 2025. The French film producer is on a quest to produce a costly medieval saga based on the French novel series The Accursed Kings. Photo: AFP

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A producer is on a mission to bring The Accursed Kings to the big screen in France’s riskiest movie project since 2017’s Valerian


A producer is on a mission to bring The Accursed Kings to the big screen in France’s riskiest movie project since 2017’s Valerian.


The Accursed Kings, which inspired Game of Thrones, could get its own film saga

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}A producer is on a mission to bring The Accursed Kings to the big screen in France’s riskiest movie project since 2017’s Valerian

A producer is on a mission to bring The Accursed Kings to the big screen in France’s riskiest movie project since 2017’s Valerian