‘Call My Agent!’ Producers Discuss Movie Plans and What’s Next for The Hit French Show (EXCLUSIVE)

Elsa Keslassy
·4 min read

With a number of remakes and a movie in the pipeline, “Call My Agent!,” the International Emmy Award-winning series set at a Parisian talent agency, has become one of the most powerful television shows to emerge from France.

The series’ producers, Mediawan-owned Mon Voisin Productions and Mother Production, are co-producing the highly anticipated U.K. remake with Headline Pictures and Bron Studios (“Joker”) for Amazon Prime Video and Sundance Now.

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The producers are also in the process of developing a 90-minute film with Nicolas Mercier, who wrote episodes of “Call My Agent.” Fanny Herrero was showrunner of the series.

“It will open with Andrea [Camille Cottin] in New York and will then move to France — we will give an American point of view on filming in France and it promises to be quite colorful,” says Michel Feller at Mon Voisin Productions.

Netflix, which picked up “Call My Agent!” shortly after season one aired on France Televisions and has given it massive international exposure, is expected to acquire global rights (outside of France) to the longer format.

Elsewhere, the English-language remake is set to bow on Amazon and Sundance Now this spring.

Discussing the U.K. show, Aurelien Larger at Mother Production says, “It’s a very rare achievement for a French show to be remade in the U.K. and even more so for French producers to be involved creatively in it but we always kept in mind that a good remake has to betray the original and that’s especially true for Britain, which has such a vibrant culture.”

Both Feller and Larger point out that the U.K. remake is firmly grounded in London and highlights different aspects of the British entertainment industry, with a significant emphasis on live theater. The U.K. remake will also have more workplace drama and dark humor than the French original, which is mainly a comedy with a lighter tone.

The original series owes its enormous popularity to the wild and often hilarious plots that were all based on real anecdotes from Feller and Dominique Besnehard, who are both former talent agents and partners at Mon Voisin. Then came Fanny Herrero, the show’s creator and initial showrunner, and Harold Valentin at Mother Productions who played a key part in getting the series commissioned by France Televisions’ channel France 2. “It was a lot of team work!” says Feller, who notes that a total of 70 screenwriters got to work on the French show.

Those anecdotes also gave John Morton, the writer and showrunner of the U.K. show, a rich canvas to work from. “Morton and his team of writers pulled from our stories to create scripts that are culturally grounded, and he also spoke to London agents,” says Feller.

Camille Cottin, who recently starred in “Stillwater” and “House of Gucci,” previously told Variety that she would be keen on doing a cameo in the British show. Larger says a crossover of British and French cast members could eventually happen in a future season of the remake.

Feller and Larger say their greatest pride with “Call My Agent!” is to have created a series that resonates with audiences around the world and with people from different ages and backgrounds.

“When we were at the International Emmy Awards ceremony in New York, we were amazed by the number of people who congratulated us on the show and said how much they loved it,” says Feller. Another major accomplishment, says Larger, is to have allowed the series’ entire ensemble cast to break through.

Besides Cottin, the other recurrent characters have seen their careers flourish, including Laure Calamy, who won the Cesar award in 2020 as well as a prize at Venice last year for the film “Full Time”; Nicolas Maury (“Garçon Chiffon”); Grégory Montel; Assaâd Bouab; Thibault de Montalembert; Stéfi Celma; Fanny Sidney; and Liliane Rovère.

International rights to “Call My Agent!” are being handled by Newen Connect’s TF1 Studio and France TV Distribution. A raft of remakes are set to go into production this year including in South Korea, Indonesia and Italy, where Palomar, the Rome-based company controlled by France’s Mediawan, is producing.

Mon Voisin Production is currently preparing to shoot the first two episodes of “Ca c’est Paris,” an internationally-driven series written by Marc Fitoussi and set at a Parisian cabaret

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