News culture It’s one of the biggest hits on Netflix and it could disappear from the platform: a screenwriter accuses this film of having plagiarized his idea
Published on 01/07/2024 at 12:30
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Released at the very beginning of June, one of the recent films in the Netflix catalog, an original production moreover, is said to be in turmoil. Already targeted by a screenwriter before the release, a procedure is underway to find out whether these allegations of plagiarism are proven or not. If the film survives for the moment and avoids a blocking of its distribution while awaiting the verdict, the outcome of the procedure could perhaps be fatal to it with an outright withdrawal.
This French film sets a record on the platform with 120 million views but faces criticism
In addition to negotiating the broadcast rights to great classics of cinema and entertainment, the Netflix platform exchanges upstream with the teams of certain projects to include them in its catalog, symbol of a great spotlight, or it makes arrangements quite simply to develop its own original programs. Very often, this results in a plebiscite from the public, in terms of viewing above all, and we see these productions at the top of the ranking of films and series in turn. Lately it’s the movie Under the Seine who stood out.
Sometimes the recipe for success doesn’t come down to much. Put a shark in the Seine, frightened Parisians and a team ready to tempt the devil and you secure the number 1 spot. With this formula, the feature film by Xavier Gens broke records for viewing hours by recording no less than 120 million in the space of two weeks. However, this accumulation did not necessarily open the doors to critical consecration since the spectators were not particularly convinced at the end of the viewing, as evidenced by the ratings received by Netflix creation. If this news was already complicated to digest, another worry was added to all this.
The synopsis of the project and that of the Netflix film are very similar…
In reality, It’s been months since the movie Under the Seine is threatened with legal actionpartly because it was largely inspired by the project of a certain Vincent Dietschy without the latter being credited as the true author of this original scenario. According to the main person concerned, he had the idea for this story, named the “Silure” project and recorded in documents in 2014, more than ten years ago, in 2011 to be precise, and It is true that the synopsis, to be found opposite, is quite close to the plot of the Netflix film : « A young policewoman working as a diver for the Paris river brigade encounters a natural phenomenon of a new kind, represented by a gigantic, terrifying, aggressive and man-killing catfish. ».
Two years earlier, the filmmaker had already taken steps to block the release of the film upon hearing of the project, going so far as to take legal action and file a complaint for unfair competition against the producers and an agent of the project. At the moment, following a hearing on June 14, a procedure is underway and Vincent Dietschy, also awaiting the final verdict, is still on alert regarding the blocking of the broadcast that he had requested for the time of judgment. On the side of the accusation, we defend ourselves, by insisting on the fact that we do not know this man, to quote the producer Edouard Duprey, and we counter-attack, as Xavier Gens did, by declaring that he ” do not think that the people who accuse us have written a single page » and that this type of accusation “ happens all the time and (…) that it becomes a cliché ».
