— First, I'll start with a bad news : Pharaoh is dead. Canal+ was developing this historical series with Daniel Knauf (creator and showrunner of HBO's Carnivà le) and John Milius (Dirty Harry, Apocalypse Now, Conan the Barbarian, creator of HBO's Rome) at the helm, but they failed in their attempt to find a US broadcaster that would be willing to co-finance the series, that sadly means the show won't see the light of day. Daniel Knauf confirmed that to Tagne :
— Pharaoh would have been the latest addition to Canal+'s original english-speaking series. Speaking about that, I found this nice montage, kind of like what HBO does every now and then, and I thought it was worth posting.
It doesn't show most of Canal+'s original series, it focuses on three of them. Indeed, the following trailer is presenting Borgia and XIII (both returning for a second season in 2012/2013), and Carlos as well. Carlos is a 5h30 miniseries (3 parts) shot in English, Spanish and French. It aired on Canal+ on May 19, May 26 and June 3, 2010, was in the official selection of the 2010 Cannes film festival (as a 2h45 film version), won the 2011 Golden Globe for best miniseries (also nominated for best actor) while Édgar Ramirez won the César for best actor (Olivier Assayas and Luc Barnier were both nominated for best directing and best editing). Both Assayas and Ramirez were nominated at the 2011 Emmys as well.
Here it is : http://player.canalplus.fr/#/564428
I couldn't embed the trailer above. The trailer below, however, could be embedded. It's another montage but this time featuring the other series in Canal+'s lineup (in French) : Engrenages, Mafiosa, Pigalle la nuit, Braquo and Maison Close. The Canal+ original series that ended before August 2009 (La Commune, Sécurité intérieure, Le bureau, Scalp, Reporters) are not included. It's probably been produced 18 months ago but it's very well done and the music is great, it's worth a peek if you ask me. Here it is :
Here's another version, without Pigalle la nuit and the XIII miniseries (not to be confused with the current series) but with the new series of 2011, namely XIII, Platane and Borgia, and there's another montage for Carlos (subtitled instead of dubbed + excerpts on Golden Globe win) and a new one of Mafiosa in it as well : http://player.canalplus.fr/#/564427
— It's worth pointing out that there isn't a single image of Hard in neither of these trailers. It's probably because of the special status of this dramedy, born in the womb of La Nouvelle Trilogie, a yearly experimental program started in 2006 that puts on the air 3 different stories each season, all of them written by newcomers (you have to write a letter to Canal+, explain your project, if you're picked you go to pitch it to them and if you're lucky they give you funds to put that 90-minute story on screen). They saw so much potential in Hard that instead of 3x30 min, they allowed it to have 6x30 min, and then come back for a second season (12x30min), which none of the other films belonging to La Nouvelle Trilogie have done so far. Hard is still a Canal+ original series, but it doesn't have the same status as other bigger series, hence this absence. Speaking of Hard, Charlie Dupont, one of the main actors (he plays Corrado) recently said that Cathy Verney (creator of the show) is writing the third season but that production won't start until after she finishes shooting her (first) movie.
Season 1 (2006) : a dead Romanian prostitute.
Season 2 (2008) : drug trafficking.
Season 3 (2010) : a serial killer and corruption.
Season 4 (probably Oct/Nov 2012) : clandestine immigration, "sans-papiers" (people without papers).
Season 5 (2013 ?) : problems revolving around police informants (source).
Why 2013 for season 5? It's not just wishful thinking : a few months ago I read somewhere that Canal+ wanted to bring back Engrenages quicker than every two years and for this purpose, they would not wait until season 4 has aired to start working on the next season. Since the writers are already figuring out which will be the main topic (CIs), I'm assuming it's true, they're working on it despite the fact that season 4 is still filming (it should be ending soon, btw). Great news !
By the way, the last two pictures were taken in late April during the filming of episode 4.11 of Engrenages on location at the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Nanterre.
— Here's the great opening sequence of the 4th season of Mafiosa (8 episodes) which aired from March 19 to April 9 :
— Last March, 12 days after the successful release of a biopic about the life of famous French singer Claude François, Cloclo (raving reviews + 1,800,000 entries), Canal+ didn't fail to mention that "Florent Emilio-Siri, the director of Cloclo, is working on a project for Canal+ about Bonnot's Gang" (probably an historical/action drama then) :
I mentioned that project 9 months ago in this thread, and I'm very excited about this potential series. Florent Emilio-Siri wrote & directed great films, namely (except the first one, all the following trailers are in english) : the amazing 2002 action film Nid de guêpes (literally "Wasp nest", translated as The Nest), the stellar 2007 war film L'ennemi intime (literally "The Intimate Enemy", translated as Intimate Enemies) and the brilliant 2012 biopic Cloclo (translated as My Way). He also directed sequences and supervised the visual aspect of the first installment of one of my favorite videogame series, Splinter Cell, and he directed the opening sequence of the sequel, Pandora Tomorrow. Plus, Siri made a Hollywood movie, the 2005 action film Hostage, starring Bruce Wilis (it was alright, but far less good than his other 3 films).
Speaking of Cloclo (already one of the best films of 2012, imo), if you live in London and are interested in seeing this film, it will be released exclusively at the Ciné Lumière on June 22. As I said before, here's a trailer subtitled in english. Interesting, isn't it ? The english title of Cloclo is My Way, that's the name of the song Frank Sinatra sang by adapting Claude François' Comme d'habitude, and that reminds me of the english translation of the Edith Piaf biopic La Môme, also the title of a famous song of hers, La vie en rose — besides, like Cloclo for Claude François, La môme (a familiar word meaning "the kid" or "kiddo") was also the nickname of Edith Piaf.
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