Pathé’s historical diptych “La Bataille de Gaulle” mounted an unexpected box-office comeback in French theatres after producers moved up the release of the second installment and record-breaking summer heat drove audiences indoors for air-conditioning, The New Yorker reported.
Why did the first part struggle?
The first installment hit French theatres in June to dismal ticket sales. Co-director and sound editor Frédéric Baudry was M.I.A. during the rollout, still busy editing the sound for Part 2.
“I honestly didn’t give a shit about the noise outside the mixing room,” Baudry recalled to The New Yorker.
Producers scrambled to salvage the project as ticket numbers lagged.
How did Pathé reshape the release?
The film’s producers moved up the release of the second installment to coincide with la Fête du Cinema, a nationwide promotion offering discounted tickets. Executives also overhauled the marketing campaign for the unwieldy titles “La Bataille de Gaulle: L’Âge de Fer” and “La Bataille de Gaulle: J’Écris Ton Nom”.
“We had a crisis meeting, and I said, ‘We have a rifle with only two shots,’” producer and actor Léa Seydoux’s grandfather Jérôme Seydoux told The New Yorker.
Nature provided an accidental third boost when record-breaking heat sent crowds flocking to cinemas for air-conditioning. Admissions surged by seventy per cent by the fourth week. Word-of-mouth took over, turning a struggling project into a national sensation praised by Le Parisien as “a fiasco turned triumph.”
Who is Jérôme Seydoux?
Jérôme Seydoux runs Pathé Palace from its Paris headquarters. At ninety-two, he combines the showmanship of Louis B. Mayer and Willy Wonka, crafting France’s major films through market savvy and personal conviction.
Seydoux witnessed firsthand the Liberation of Paris in August 1944. He and his sister snuck out past their guarded home and saw a German tank near the Tuileries.
Making an expensive diptych about a wooden statesman fits his recent strategy of transforming canonical French stories into lavish historical epics reminiscent of 1950s and 1960s Hollywood.
Pathé previously found major domestic success with “The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan” and “The Count of Monte Cristo”.
“It’s this sort of instinctive I.P.,” film critic Jordan Mintzer told The New Yorker. “We have Marvel. They have Dumas.”
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