After “Emilia Pérez” scored a best picture nomination at last year’s Oscars, Netflix is reuniting with French director Jacques Audiard on his next project, which will be an elevated horror film.
Netflix has optioned “La Nuit ravagée” — a critically acclaimed horror novel by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo — and has tapped Audiard to develop a film adaptation, which will be a French-language Netflix original. Netflix had no comment.
“La Nuit ravagée” is set in Saint-Auch, a fictional suburb on the outskirts of Toulouse in Southern France, in the early 1990s. It follows a group of teenagers drawn to an abandoned house that exerts a strange power on them. After one of their friends dies under disturbing circumstances, they decide to enter the house, not suspecting it’s alive with something supernatural. Once they enter it, it begins to feed on their private fears, desires and traumas, turning their psychological vulnerabilities into something monstrous and inescapable.
Published by Gallimard last year, the book has been hailed as a loving homage to 1980s-90s horror films, especially Stephen King. It’s also been praised for skillfully blending fantasy and horror with social realism, confronting issues such as racism, homophobia and domestic violence, as well as capturing adolescent anxiety.
Del Amo is best known for his 2016 novel “Le Règne Animal,” which was adapted into a French sci-fi adventure film directed by Thomas Cailley. The film world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won five Cesar Awards.
The project will mark a departure for Audiard, who has never ventured into horror before. However, he is a strong match for the material because he’s built his career on stories about outsiders navigating brutal worlds in films like “A Prophet,” “Dheepan,” “Rust and Bone” and “Emilia Pérez.” He’s also expected to deliver more than a straightforward genre film, emphasizing the social realism aspects and sensory prose of the novel.
Audiard is also known for always being up for a new challenge. His last directorial effort, “Emilia Pérez,” was a Spanish-language musical crime drama shot entirely in France, with a cast led by Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez and Adriana Paz. It won the jury prize at Cannes and made history with its best actress award given collectively to its four female leads. The film went on to earn 13 nominations at the Oscars and was considered a frontrunner for best picture. But in the lead-up to the ceremony, the movie campaign was rocked by a scandal involved offensive tweets by Gascón that had resurfaced. Still, “Emilia Pérez” won two Oscars: best supporting actress for Saldaña and original song. The movie also thrived at the Cesar Awards, winning seven awards out of 12 nominations, including best film.
It’s also worth noting that horror is riding major commercial momentum right now on the heels of the year’s biggest breakout hits, “Backrooms” and “Obsession,” which grossed $387 million and $443 million worldwide, respectively.
Since the project will be a Netflix original, it will likely skip a theatrical release in France, where windowing rules restrict the streamer’s access to theatrical movies for 15 months. Audiard is the latest high-profile international auteur working with Netflix on original films, following Guillermo del Toro, Lee Chang-dong and Fernando Meirelles, among others.