“We’re evolving,” says Gaumont’s Alexis Cassanet of the company’s shifting strategy as it unveils ‘The Wizard Of The Kremlin’ and ‘The Stranger’

Celebrating its 130^th anniversary this year, France’s Gaumont is the world’s oldest film studio still in operation. But as it launches two high-profile projects in Venice’s main competition (Olivier Assayas’ The Wizard Of The Kremlin and François Ozon’s The Stranger) and has the top two local-language titles at France’s 2025 box office to date (Once Upon My Mother and How To Make A Killing), it is showing few signs of its age.

Founded by Leon Gaumont in 1895, the French major is used to selling cinema tickets at home and abroad, with the company’s broad-appeal global hits over the years including The Visitors (1993), The Fifth Element (1997), Le Dîner de Cons (1998) and The Intouchables (2011).

This year’s Venice selections, however, are more illustrative of its current strategy to focus on auteur-driven features with international ambitions (read Screen’s verdict on The Wizard Of The Kremlin here; The Stranger premieres on September 2).

As part of that international-facing shift, in May the company promoted Alexis Cassanet to executive VP of international distribution and co-productions – a slight change from his previous title, executive VP of international sales and distribution, which he had held since 2019.

In his new role, Cassanet continues to spearhead sales, working closely with co-head Adeline Falampin, but has also added oversight on development, financing and co-production. He reports to Ariane Toscan du Plantier, who heads up French and international distribution, under company CEO Sidonie Dumas.

“Gaumont has always wanted to develop films internationally,” says Cassanet. “[But] our ambition [now] is to intensify this with confirmed auteurs and recognisable casts.”

The studio’s scope spans production, distribution and international sales in both cinema and TV with subsidiaries in the UK, US, Germany, Italy and Latin America. It may have exited theatrical exhibition in 2017 when it sold its shares in the joint-venture Gaumont Pathé cinema chain to Pathé, but it launched a production services arm in early 2024 and continues to bank on its heritage with film restorations and Gaumont Classique, a black-and-white cinema streaming platform.

On the production side, the company has been moving full speed ahead with ambitious, talent-focused projects in both English and French.

As well as Assayas’ take on the rise of Vladimir Putin, which stars Paul Dano, Jude Law and Alicia Vikander, and Ozon’s spin on Albert Camus’ literary classic The Stranger, the slate includes Xavier Giannoli’s Second World War drama Rays And Shadows with Jean Dujardin and August Diehl, Intouchables directors Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache’s 1980s-set family comedy Just An Illusion starring Camille Cottin and Louis Garrel, and A Good Little Soldier from filmmaker Stephane Brize starring Alba Rohrwacher and Vincent Lindon.

The company also recently announced a high-profile English-language addition to its line-up: Paul McCartney’s High In The Clouds, a 3D-animated adventure that will feature McCartney voicing a walrus, alongside the likes of Celine Dion, Lionel Richie, Ringo Starr, Idris Elba and Hannah Waddingham.

“We’re evolving with the market,” Cassanet explains of the strategy shift, which he says has been a natural response to the post-pandemic industry. “We finance films differently today. Before, we could fully finance films with pre-sales which is not the case today, particularly for very ambitious films.”

For the past few years, Cassanet and his teams have been actively working to secure gap financing via global funds and private investors. “More and more, we’ve had to find new sources of complementary financing.”

Based at Gaumont’s headquarters in the Paris suburb of Neuilly, Cassanet works alongside the film production team and the company’s international outposts to structure financing and board co-productions at an earlier stage. “We want to specifically develop films that can travel,” he says.

Gaumont develops many projects in-house but also comes on board as a co-producer, distributor and for international sales. Increasingly, the company is “steering away” from first-time filmmakers in favour of working with established directors, although it will make exceptions “for truly unique projects and filmmakers”. For instance, it recently backed action thriller The Orphans, the debut feature of acclaimed stunt coordinator Olivier Schneider, whose vast list of credits includes No Time To Die and Fast X.

Seeking success

The Wizard Of The Kremlin, which is heading to TIFF following Venice, is Gaumont’s first large-scale English-language feature since 2017’s The Death Of Stalin (also a film about a brutal Russian dictator although more satirical in bent).

“We were waiting for the right project to head back into the spotlight,” says Cassanet, adding that the company is now aiming for one or two English-language productions annually to feed its slate of 10-12 films per year.

The company is also banking on The Stranger’s international appeal after its Venice bow. Camus’s 1942 novella is one of the most popular books in French literature and has been translated into at least 75 languages.

On the home front, Gaumont continues to champion mainstream fare that has the potential to travel outside of France. Its two big 2025 hits, for instance – comedy How To Make A Killing, starring Franck Dubosc and Laure Calamy, and family drama Once Upon My Mother starring Leila Bekhti – have both reached around 1.5 million admissions at home, while selling respectively to 30 and 40 international markets.

But Cassanet admits that while a hit at home can be a strong seller in many markets, crossing the Atlantic has become a far greater challenge (although a US deal has just been struck on Once Upon My Mother and will be announced soon).

“The US market expects singular, auteur-driven festival films from France,” he comments. “Our more mainstream titles have trouble breaking into the market. Even some of the biggest French productions don’t get released.”

In addition to fostering relationships with its filmmakers, the company banks on long-term collaborations with robust production outfits such as Quad Films, Olivier Delbosc’s Curiosa Films, and Eric and Nicolas Altmayer’s Mandarin Films. With Quad, as well as Toledano and Nakache’s Just An Illusion, it is co-producing, distributing and selling Anthony Marciano’s Le Rêve Américain (The American Dream) starring Jean-Pascal Zadi and Raphael Quenard, based on the true story of two French friends from modest backgrounds who ended up becoming two of the biggest agents in the NBA.

For the time being, the company is operating on a film-by-film basis, and unlike some of its French competitors, it has not signed a slate deal with a major investment fund. But as it seeks to increase its volume of international films, that could change in the future.

With celebrations ongoing for its 130th anniversary – including a month-long retrospective this month at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles that will screen 12 features from the Gaumont archives – Cassanet says the company is in no rush when it comes to its global expansion.

“We’re moving one day at a time, one foot in front of the other. We are ambitious, but we will take things step by step.”

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