After Emilia Perez was nominated for Best Picture at last year’s Academy Awards, Netflix is reteaming with French director Jacques Audiard for his next film, which will be a more elevated horror film.
Netflix has optioned Jean-Baptiste del Amo’s acclaimed horror novel La Nuit ravagée and has asked Audiard to develop a film adaptation that will become a French-language Netflix original. Netflix has not commented.
“La Nuit ravagée” is set in the early 1990s in the south of France, in the fictional suburb of Santouche outside Toulouse. The film follows a group of teenagers drawn to an abandoned house that exerts strange powers. After one of their friends dies under disturbing circumstances, they decide to enter the house, not thinking that it is alive with something supernatural. Once they enter it, it begins to feed on their personal fears, desires, and traumas, turning their psychological vulnerability into something monstrous and inescapable.
The book, published last year by Gallimard, has been hailed as a loving homage to 1980s and 1990s horror films, particularly Stephen King. It has also been praised for its deft blend of fantasy and horror with social realism, tackling issues such as racism, homophobia, and domestic violence, and capturing adolescent angst.
Del Amo is best known for his 2016 novel Le Règne Animal, which was made into a French science fiction adventure film directed by Thomas Cayley. The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and won five César Awards.
This project marks a departure for Audiard, who had never ventured into horror before. But he’s a perfect fit, having built a career on stories of outsiders navigating a cruel world in films like The Prophet, Deepan, Rust and Bone and Emilia Perez. He is also expected to emphasize the social realism aspects and sensuous prose of the novel, delivering more than a simple genre film.
Audiard is also known for always taking on new challenges. His last directorial effort, Emilia Perez, was a Spanish-language musical crime drama filmed entirely in France, with a cast that included Carla Sofia Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz. She made history at the Cannes Film Festival by winning the Jury Prize and winning the Best Actress award for all four women. The film received 13 Oscar nominations and was considered a frontrunner for Best Picture. But ahead of the ceremony, a scandal involving offensive tweets by Gascón resurfaced, rocking the film’s campaign. Still, “Emilia Perez” won two Oscars: Best Supporting Actress for Saldaña and Best Original Song. The film was also a huge success at the César Awards, winning seven awards out of twelve nominations, including Best Picture.
It’s also worth noting that horror is currently enjoying major commercial momentum following this year’s biggest blockbusters, Backrooms and Obsession, which grossed $387 million and $443 million worldwide, respectively.
Because the project will be a Netflix original, it will likely not be released theatrically in France, where window rules restrict the streamer’s access to theatrical films for 15 months. Audiard is the latest high-profile international auteur to collaborate with Netflix on an original film, following in the footsteps of Guillermo del Toro, Lee Chang-dong, and Fernando Meirelles.
