Gaumont has taken a 37.5% stake in Légende SAS, the French company owned by Alain Goldman, producer of La vie en rose.

Gaumont will join actual stockholders such as the family holding Rosal and Serendipity Investment, a fund run 50-50 by Martin Bouygues, Chairman and CEO of Bouygues (the French construction and telecom/media giant), and billionaire François Pinault, head of PPR.

Gaumont and Légende also struck a deal to become longterm partners in movies and TV series production.

In its 18-year-history, Légende has produced or coproduced such movies as 1492 (Ridley Scott), Casino (Martin Scorsese) and La vie en rose (Olivier Dahan).

In France, Legende has produced many successful comedies such as Coco (3m tickets sold in 2009), Fatal (1.1m tickets sold in 2010), as well as ambitious historical movies as The Round Up (La rafle), 2.8m tickets sold last year), a retelling of the 1942 Vel’ d’Hiv’ round up, when 13,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps by the French Police.

(Anne Laure Bell contributed to this report.)

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