Sony Pictures has acquired remake rights to Fathers And Guns based on Emile Gaudreault’s action comedy De Pere En Flic that became the highest grossing French-language film ever released in Quebec and Canada this summer.

Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall will develop and produce with writer-director Gaudreault and his producer on the original, Denise Robert.

The story follows two police officers, a father and son, who detest each other and are assigned to an investigation to infiltrate an outdoor adventure group-therapy camp for fathers and sons.

De Pere En Flic opened number one through Alliance Vivafilm in Quebec on $1.6m in July and proved to be a summer hit, capturing two-thirds of the season’s ticket sales in the province and out-grossing by at least 50% Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, according to Sony.

Rachel O’Connor is overseeing for Sony Pictures and Matt Jackson is overseeing for Kennedy/Marshall.

“We feel that the story and characters that made Fathers And Guns a local phenomenon will make our film connect with audiences everywhere,” Matt Tolmach, who along with Doug Belgrad serves as president of Columbia Pictures, said. “The film combines the strengths of a great, classic comedy cop thriller with a hilarious look at a dysfunctional father-son relationship.”

“We greatly admire the work that went into the movie, and recognise that it will be hard to replicate a creative team like Emile Gaudreault, Ian Lauzon, and Denise Robert,” Kennedy added. “We just hope that we can make the English-language adaptation as entertaining and successful as the original has been in Quebec.”

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