The French Netflix production expected for this summer is swimming in troubled waters: a very similar project, but with a catfish instead of the shark, accuses its creators of plagiarism.
D-40. No, it’s not the countdown before the Paris Olympic Games, but before the release of Under the Seinethe Netflix film Xavier Gens (Budapest, Farang) awaited by many curious people.
Because this year, one of the highlights of summer will be a shark film… but in the City of Lights! When the trailer was released at the beginning of the month, First we wrote “The concept ‘Sharknado’ in the French style in the middle of the Olympic Games has everything of a genius idea.” An original idea, you say? Not quite…
A Shark Under the Seine? Netflix unveils the trailer for its Parisian anxiety film
In an interview given to World on April 1, the French director Vincent Dietschy – including the short film Parisian life won the César in 2013 – accuses the American company and the film’s producers, Edouard Duprey and Sébastien Auscher, of having taken the script from Catfisha film which never saw the light of day but for which he had the idea in 2011.
According to Worldthe synopsis filed with the CNC is as follows:
“A young policewoman, a diver at the Paris river brigade, finds herself confronted with an unprecedented natural phenomenon, embodied by a gigantic catfish, terribly aggressive and a killer of human beings. While the monster sows panic in the capital, threatening the mayor’s policies a few days before the choice of the city which will organize the Olympic Games, the heroine finds herself on the front line to confront this figure of evil of a new kind. Helped in her fight by a young ichthyologist from the CNRS,. At the same time, she becomes closer to her hierarchical superior, the commander.”
As a reminder, Under the Seine takes place during the triathlon world championships where the event is threatened with turning into a bloodbath while Sophia, a brilliant scientist is alerted by Mika, an activist defending ecology, of the presence of a mastodon shark in the river.
Simple coincidence or copying? For the French director, the similarities are too important:
“The industry pushes us to propose films that can be boiled down to simple ideas. That’s the rule for getting financed. But Catfishit’s a bombshell that can be summed up in seven words: “Jaws in Paris.” It’s extremely simple. And it’s also the easiest thing to steal. A guy at the next table can hear us and, if he can afford it, take the idea. Except that in this case there are other points of concordance. No film, to my knowledge, has ever been made about the river brigade.”
On the other hand, the producer of Under the Seine, Edouard Duprey, refutes the accusations. This is not the first and last shark movie: Jaws, In Troubled Waters, Survival Instinct, Blue Fear…”For me, it’s a shark film; he’s a catfish movie” – or a big fish. He explains that he was inspired not by Vincent Dietschy’s screenplay, but rather by The Host by Bong Joon-Ho.
Because it would be too complicated to accuse the streaming platform of plagiarism, the legal procedure launched concerns “acts of parasitism” – in other words unfair competition. The first interview will take place on June 14.
Could the case postpone the broadcast of these “French Jaws” with Bérenice Bejo (The Artist, OSS 117: Cairo, nest of spies) Nassim Lyes (Farang) and Léa Léviant? Under the Seine is currently scheduled for June 5 on Netflix.
