Netflix French Shark Movie

French shark movie Under Paris made an impact on worldwide streaming last week, scoring the best launch for a non-English language film on Netflix with 41 million views in its five first days on the service.

Playing just weeks before the summer Olympics in Paris, the movie about triathlon athletes who get devoured during swimming race in the Seine river ranked first on Netflix’s top 10 for non-English language films across 93 countries.

Under Paris was praised by horror master Stephen King, who initially thought it “would be a jokey movie, like ‘Sharknado’” and found it it “really quite good.” “The last 25 minutes were amazing,” King said on X.

It’s an achievement for a movie which was not an easy sell, “Under Paris” filmmaker Xavier Gens said.

The project was turned down by French studios and financiers before Netflix came on board, says Gens, director of genre movies such as “Hitman” and “Mayhem!” in addition to episodes of “Lupin.”

“People in France didn’t dare touch it. It’s a film that couldn’t have been produced and financed in the traditional circuit, because folks assumed that shark movies could only be made by Americans or Koreans,” he says.

The movie was produced with a budget in the €20 million range ($22 million), a large price by French standards.

The budget was mostly covered by Netflix, along with tax credits in France, where the post-production was done, as well as in Belgium and Spain where the film shot.

Gens says “Under Paris” is as much a genre movie aimed at entertaining audiences as it is a political satire in the veins of “Don’t Look Up.” It is riffing at the hypocrisy of French politicians who claim that the Olympics are all about bringing people together–when there’s also a commercial agenda and consequences for climate change.

Based on an original idea by Edouard Duprey and Sebastien Auscher, the film was penned by Gens, Maud Heywang and Yannick Dahan.

Berenice Bejo, Oscar-nominated for The Artist, stars as a grieving scientist who teams up with a cop to prevent deadly shark attack in the run-up to an international triathlon held at the Seine river.

The idea of swimming in the Seine, a polluted place, is also a joke pulled directly from the city mayor Anne Hidalgo’s pledge to clean up the river enough that athletes and visitors would be able to swim in it during the Olympics.

Up to $1.5 billion was spent to clean up the Parisian river, according to French media. But ironically, while “Under Paris” is drawing millions of eyeballs with a movie about a river full of sharks and trash, this week the mayor of Paris postponed the date for a “historic bathing” event in the Seine due to country’s political turmoil.

Hidalgo said the dip will take place after July 7, post the snap elections, which were called by French president Emmanuel Macron after the victory of French far right party Rassemblement National at the European elections.

Under Paris: French Shark Movie–Huge Success for Netflix

Netflix French Shark Movie

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