Pierre Lescure, former president of the Cannes Film Festival, is embarking on a new career chapter as director of the Studio de Paris. The latter was created by Luc Besson in 2012 and has hosted multiple seasons of Emily in Paris, among other notable productions.
A respected figure in the French film industry, Mr. Lescure has close relationships with filmmakers, producers and studio heads in Europe and the United States. In addition to working closely with Thierry Frémaux at the Cannes Film Festival, he co-founded and led French pay-TV giant Canal Plus Group for 20 years in the 1980s, and was president of Universal for several years. Owned by Vivendi.
Lescure was joined at Studio de Paris by producer and entrepreneur Tarak Ben Ammar, who is the site’s new owner from 2022. Ben Ammar co-founded Studio de Paris with Besson, motivated by the ambition to compete with England’s Pinewood, Germany’s Babelsberg and Italy’s Cinecittà.
Spread over a 9,500 m² soundstage and conveniently located on the outskirts of the French capital, the venue enjoyed a record year in 2022 and continued its strong performance in 2023. Studio de Paris then hosted the Olympic Village during the 2024 Summer Olympics. In addition to its soundstage, Studio de Paris also boasts over 15,000 m² of offices and changing rooms, offering producers a fully integrated production chain from set construction. In post production.
Extensive filming at the Studio de Paris includes such series as Besson’s “Valérian,” Eric Rochamp’s “Legends,” Jean-Jacques Annaud’s “Notre-Dame-Bruil,” Pablo Larrain’s “Jackie,” Robert Zemeckis’ “The Last Mrs. Parish,” and Cathy Yan’s “The Gallerist,” and “The Gallarist.” “Murder Mystery 2” on Apple TV, “The Walking Dead” on Netflix, “Emily in Paris” on AMC, David Fincher’s “The Killer,” and more.
In his new role as president of the Studio de Paris, Mr. Lescure will become an ambassador for the facility, liaising with filmmakers and producers in Europe and the United States to attract prestigious shoots.
“Murder Mystery 2” set
“Paris Studios embodies the best of France: a combination of rigor, artistic passion and openness to the world. My ambition is simple: for the French film industry, I want to create Les Studios de Paris, where ideas become reality and talent Together with Tarak Ben Ammar and our team, we want to continue the momentum we started in 2022 to make it a place of encounters,” says Lescure, who works alongside Brigitte Segal, Managing Director of Studio de Studio. Paris.
“Pierre Lescure will be a great ambassador for the Studio de Paris,” said Ben Ammar, adding that Lescure “understands global cinema and has a vast knowledge of American, European and French cinema” with a track record at Cannes, Canal+ and Universal.
Rescuer has also cultivated deep relationships with talent through his popular weekly television magazine, Beau Geste, and his daily prime-time talk show, C à Vous, where he co-hosts.
“This unity of ours means one thing: never give up. Pierre and I are like the 19th century explorers who went out on boats to find new tribes, new languages, new cultures. They took risks. We also take career risks,” Ben Ammar told Variety in an interview with Lescure at the headquarters of Media One, Beau Geste and Chavous’ production group.
In addition to France’s tax incentives that give overseas producers a 40% tax rebate on local costs, Ben Ammar says producers who come to shoot at the Studio de Paris can tap into financial resources worth up to 15% of their budgets.
Ben Ammar, who played a central role in attracting blockbuster movies to Tunisia in the 1980s and helped build the local industry from the ground up, noted that his distribution company Eagle Pictures in Italy and Saudi Arabia will buy the rights to the film to be screened at the Paris studio and may receive financing from Riviera Content, the $100 million cultural fund he helped launch in Saudi Arabia.
It took a phone call from Ben Ammar to convince Mr. Lescure to take on his new role. In an interview with Variety, Lescure said he has known the French-Tunisian producer for more than 40 years, and that the two met when they started Canal+ and began talking to major European producers based in France. At the time, Ben Ammar was co-producing Franco Zeffirelli’s La Traviata and Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark in Tunisia.
Like Ben Ammar, Mr. Lescure was already familiar with the Studio de Paris, having shown Mr. Besson the construction plans more than a decade ago. A few years later, Lescure returned to the studio and visited producer Alex Berger during the filming of The Bureau de Legendes, and Dominic Farrugia, who was working with Besson at the time.
“These studios were designed by the visionary director Besson and have everything a director could dream of, from a 600 square meter to a 2,000 square meter soundstage. Because when he conceived this studio, he had government and bank support, so he had all the resources he needed for his ideal,” Lescure said, adding that Besson was also used to American studios. As a result, Besson’s Studio de Paris has a Universal Studios feel, Lescure said.
Since welcoming the Olympic Village, the Studio de Paris has undergone a major transformation with the creation of a mini-city with restaurants, businesses and first-class residential facilities, but Lescure says this will be a game-changer.
“I hadn’t been there since the Olympics, so when Tarak showed me around I was surprised at how much the environment had been updated,” he says. “The studio still has the same quality, but in addition to that, all the infrastructure around it has been built and improved to make it an ideal destination for French, European and American people. For everyone.”
“We’re going to use the relationships we’ve built with film talent, studios, producers and directors to say, ‘Come see us,'” said Lescure, who plans to travel to Los Angeles early next year to meet with Ben Ammar during awards season. One of the challenges he will face will be breaking down preconceived notions about the cost of filming in France. He says it’s actually cheaper than in England, where film crews are paid more. The Paris studio is also much closer to the city center than Pinewood’s London location. Thanks to a new rail line that connects the Studio directly to central Paris and Gare du Nord, the Eurostar hub, “Studio de Paris is now 25 minutes from the center of Paris, 15 minutes from Bourget Business Airport and 35 minutes from Roissy Airport,” says Lescure.
Although US President Donald Trump recently made new threats to impose 100% tariffs on films made outside the US, Ben Ammar said these declarations are not taken very seriously by Hollywood studios and even less seriously by independent production companies, especially since such measures are unfeasible.
“At this incredibly difficult time, there is a movement towards Europe,” Lescure said. “Even if France is in political turmoil, our economy is not in ruins and our film industry remains strong and vital.”
