EXCLUSIVE: Johnny Depp’s London-based film company IN.2 is adding a new string to its bow with the release this Friday of French historical drama Jeanne du Barry.
Starring Depp as Louis XV opposite French actress and director Maïwenn in the titular role, the picture opened the Cannes Film Festival last year.
As per Cannes’ stipulation for opening films, it released theatrically in France the same day, enjoying a successful run for distributor Le Pacte with the highest French gross for a Cannes opener since The Great Gatsby in 2013.
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IN.2 will release the movie on 70 screens on April 19 across the UK in a campaign spearheaded by Head of Production Stephen Malit.
The UK release will be followed by the U.S. launch by Vertical Entertainment on May 2, which has confirmed 600 theatres so far.
Deadline caught up with Malit as well as IN.2 CEO Stephen Deuters and Development Coordinator Vivi Stone at the company offices in Notting Hill ahead of the UK premiere at London’s Curzon Mayfair on Monday night.
Maïwenn and Johnny Depp at Jeanne du Barry UK premiere, Getty Images
Malit says the decision to handle the release came out of a conversation late last summer with sales supremo Vincent Maraval at French company Goodfellas, after only middling offers for the UK rights.
“I thought, ’Why don’t we do it?’ it’s a really good opportunity to have another aspect to IN.2. We’re co-producers on the film and would be very careful in terms of money coming in and profit share afterwards,” he recounts.
He bats back a question on whether negative press around the Johnny Depp V Amber Heard trial had deterred UK distributors from acquiring the film.
“I like to think everyone’s moved on,” he says. “I don’t think it was anything to do with Johnny but rather because it’s a French film. Even though it’s got Johnny in it, it’s a French-Language period drama. It would be very different if it were a Johnny film of a commercial nature.”
Malit, who is the long-time producer of Julien Temple on films such as Oil City Confidential, London: The Modern Babylon and Suggs: My Life Story, is drawing on his past experience in event cinema.
As well as organizing event screenings for those films he also produced the Glastonbury Festival’s Cineramageddon drive-in cinema program, through which he first connected with Depp when the actor was its inaugural guest of honor in 2017.
Malit has put together an ad-hoc team for the Jeanne du Barry theatrical push in the UK, which includes veteran independent booker Martin Myer as well as Emma McCorkell and Cheyl’s Mayer’s Team PR agency.
“We got Vue, Odeon, a load of indies, we’re happy,” says Malit on the theatre bookings. “Our target audience is your classic ABC1, from 40 to 70. It’s a costume drama.”
IN.2 has recut and simplified a trailer produced for Cannes and the French release and also kept Maïwenn, who co-wrote, directed and stars in the film, front and centre of the campaign.
The filmmaker travelled to London for the UK premiere and also participated in a sold-out event with Jeanne du Barry costume designer Jürgen Doering organized by the Cinema & Fashion platform at the Soho Hotel, exploring how they created the costumes in collaboration with Chanel.
“We’ve kept it very balanced and led a lot with Maïwenn. Johnny is on the poster too but we’re not billing it as a comeback film or anything like that,” says Malit of the campaign.
Although the UK market for non-English language films is tough right now, Malit is upbeat saying he expects to turn a profit with the combination of theatrical and an eventual digital release.
He adds that the plan is for INA.2 to release more films in the future but could not confirm whether the company would go the same route with Depp’s upcoming directorial credit Modi.
“It will be on a project-by-project basis,” he says.
Modi update
On the set of Modi
IN.2’s main focus remains production.
Depp’s Modi, billed as a “frantic 72 hours in the life of Italian artist Modigliani”, starring Riccardo Scamarcio in the titular role with Al Pacino and Steve Graham also in the cast, is currently in post-production.
“We sent an 84 second teaser to Berlin to whet the appetite and that seemed to go down quite well,” says Deuters.
The film is currently wrapping editing and will soon head into post-production and sound, with IN.2 eyeing a fall festival launch.
“It’s most certainly a Johnny Depp film, with an amazing group of collaborators,” he adds, citing costume designer Penny Rose (Pirates of the Caribbean), art director Dave Warren (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) and cinematographers Nicola Pecorini and Dariusz Wolski.
Deuters describes the shoot in Budapest last summer as “a lot of fun” while Malit gives a shout out to Hungarian producer Viktória Petrányi and director Kornél Mundruczó’s company Proton Cinema for their local support.
“They’re beautifully positioned for us, doing the top-end Hungarian art films and European films. They’re not simply a service company for the studios but actual filmmakers in their own right,” says Malit.
“Through them we were able to access a ‘caring crew’. We provided the heads of departments from abroad but basically ran with the Hungarian crew.”
Malit suggests the shoot was able to go-ahead fairly under the radar – even if there was excitement around the presence of Depp in the city – thanks to the fact so many other shoots were taking place there at the same time, including Dune 2.
“We only built the art studio in a studio, everything else was location,” he says, adding that due to less urban development Budapest looks more like early 20th Century Paris than the real city these days.
IN.2 was first announced in 2021 as a sister company to Depp’s U.S.-based banner Infinitum Nihil (headed by Sam Sarkar), on the back of a successful collaboration with Temple’s documentary Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan.
Deuters first connected with Depp in a support staff role on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and then worked as his assistant before officially segueing into producing on war photographer W. Eugene Smith bio-pic Minamata.
He says Depp first started floating the idea of creating a European-based company in London as early as 2007.
“It was in his head for a long, long time and it wasn’t necessarily about getting away from Hollywood. It was just about sort of just following the independent spirit and being able to be a bit freer,” he explains. “He’s also spent a lot of time here on Sleepy Hollow and stuff like that, so he already had a connection with the country.”
Connecting with Malit at Glastonbury in 2017 was the turning point, says Deuters. Filmmaker Temple was the programmer on the Cineramageddon initiative and secured long-time friend Depp as the star guest.
The meeting would lead to the making of the Crock of Gold: A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowan about The Pogues frontman Shane McGowan who was also a long-time friend of Depp.
“We all got on really famously and hung out a lot…. and said, let’s make a documentary on Shane McGowan. Johnny wanted to do it and Julian is obviously the great auteur for rock’n’roll films,” says Malit.
The doc went on to win the Special Jury Award in San Sebastian and then released worldwide, with Magnolia Pictures taking North American rights, and was then the catalyst for the creation of IN.2 with Depp as its President.
Three years on, the company has a raft of projects in various stages of development, with Deuters summing up the ‘modus operandi’ as being “American accessibility with European sensibility”.
He says the vibe of the slate reflects the tone of Depp’s earlier films such as Benny and Joon, Ed Wood, Dead Man, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and later titles including The Libertine and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street.
“That sort of feral, pioneering spirit, something that doesn’t attach itself to formula,” explains Deuters.
“We’ve got a multitude of different projects…. Period punk is a term we’ve thrown around a few times because a lot of the projects we’re developing tend to be period but with a modern bent,” he adds.
Projects in this vein include IN.2’s first TV drama, an Elizabethan era piece to which writer Oliver Lansley is attached with Temple on board as showrunner, as well as the second feature from artist and director Charlotte Colbert, who made waves with horror mystery She Will. Alexandra Stone is producing with Jelena Goldbach, who brought the project to IN.2
“We can’t say too much right now because they’re in different stages of development but they all have a European art house sensibility with heavy hitters attached,” says Development Coordinator Stone.
The company is also developing a first feature by UK poet and stand-up performer Murray Lachlan Young.
“It’s an original story with poetry involved,” says Stone. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
Malit notes that the projects are financed on a case by case with a mixture of equity finance, pre-sales soft money, private investors and industry backers including Spanish distributor A Contracorriente Films.
“We operate like a normal, independent film company,” he says.
Deuters says that while Depp may have a small cameo role in Temple’s upcoming drama series, his appearance in the IN.2 projects is not a given.
“We don’t want to be reliant on Johnny. If he takes a liking to something, then he gets first dibs but while it’s his company, we’re on our own road,” he says, adding that Jack Whigham at Range Media Talent Agency remains the first port of call for third party producers wishing to solicit Depp for a role.
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