Pierre Lescure, the former president of the Cannes Film Festival, is venturing into a new career chapter as head of the Studios de Paris. The latter were created by Luc Besson in 2012 and have hosted multiple seasons of “Emily in Paris,” among other high-profile productions.
Lescure, a well-respected figure within the French cinema landscape, has close ties with filmmakers, producers and studio bosses in Europe and in the U.S. On top of his tenure at the Cannes Film Festival, where he worked closely with Thierry Fremaux, he also co-founded the French pay TV giant Canal+ Group in the 1980’s and presided over it for two decades, as well as served as president of Universal for a couple years when it was owned by Vivendi.
Lescure was brought on board at the Studios de Paris by the producer and entrepreneur Tarak Ben Ammar who’s been the new owner of the site since 2022. Ben Ammar had co-founded the Studios de Paris with Besson who was driven by an ambition to compete with the U.K.’s Pinewood, Germany’s Babelsberg and Italy’s Cinecitta.
Spreading across 9,500 m² of soundstages and conveniently located 20-or-so minutes from the French capital, the venue had a record year in 2022 and continued seeing strong activity in 2023. The Studios de Paris then hosted the Olympic Village during the Summer games in 2024. Besides its soundstages, the Studios de Paris also boast more than 15,000 m² of offices and dressing rooms to provide producers with a fully integrated production chain, from set construction to post-production.
Some of the biggest shoots that have been hosted at the Studios de Paris include Besson’s “Valérian,” Éric Rochant’s “Le Bureau des Légendes,” Jean-Jacques Annaud’s “Notre-Dame brûle,” “Jackie” by Pablo Larraín, “The Last Mrs Parrish” by Robert Zemekis, “The Gallerist” by Cathy Yan and series such as “The New Look” for Apple TV, “Murder Mystery 2” for Netflix, “The Walking Dead” for “AMC,” “Emily in Paris” and “The Killer” by David Fincher” for Netflix.
Under his new role as president of the Studios de Paris, Lescure will be the ambassador for the facilities and will be in touch with top filmmakers and producers in Europe and in the U.S. to attract prestigious shoots.
Sets of “Murder Mystery 2”
“The Paris Studios embody the best of France: a combination of rigor, artistic passion and openness to the world. My ambition is simple: to continue, with Tarak Ben Ammar and our teams, the momentum that began in 2022 to make Les Studios de Paris a place where ideas come to life and talents meet, in the service of the French film industry,” says Lescure, who will work alongside Brigitte Segal, managing director of the Studios de Paris.
“Pierre Lescure will be a fantastic ambassador for the Studios de Paris,” says Ben Ammar,” adding that Lescure “understands cinema on a worldwide scale and has a vast knowledge of U.S., European and French cinema” due to his track record at Cannes, Canal+ and Universal.
Lescure has also cultivated deep bonds with talent through his popular weekly TV magazine Beau Geste, along with the primetime daily talk show C à Vous which he co-hosts.
“This union between us means one thing: never give up. Pierre and I are like explorers from the 19th century who would go out on boats to find new tribes, new languages, new cultures, they took risks. We too are taking different career risks,” Ben Ammar told Variety in an interview with Lescure at the headquarters of Mediawan, the production group behind Beau Geste and C à Vous.
In addition to the French tax incentive which provides international producers a 40% tax rebate on local expenses, Ben Ammar says producers who come shoot at the Studios de Paris will be able to tap into financial ressources that could represent roughly up to 15% of budgets.
Ben Ammar, who played a pivotal role in luring blockbuster shoots to Tunisia in the 1980’s and helped build the local industry from scratch, pointed out his distribution companies Eagle Pictures in Italy and Saudi Arabia could buy rights to movies that lense at the Studios de Paris, and potentially receive financing from Riviera Content, the $270 million cultural fund he helped launch in Saudi Arabia.
It took a phone call from Ben Ammar to convince Lescure to take on the new role. Speaking to Variety, Lescure said he’s known the French-Tunisian producer for more than 40 years as the pair met when he launched Canal+ and started talking to the major European producers who had a presence in France. At that time, Ben Ammar was co-producing Franco Zeffirelli’s “La Traviata” and Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in Tunisia.
Like Ben Ammar, Lescure was already highly familiar with the Studios de Paris ever since Besson had showed him the construction plans over a decade ago. Through the years, Lescure returned to the studios to visit producers Alex Berger when was filming “The Bureau des Legendes” and Dominique Farrugia who was then working alongside Besson there.
“Those studios were designed by a visionary director, Besson, so it has everything a director would dream of, from a 600 to 2,000 square-meter soundstage, because when he conceived it, he had all the ressources he needed to ideal since he was supported by the government and the banks,” says Lescure, adding that Besson was also accustomed to American studios. As such, Besson’s Studios de Paris have a Universal Studios flair, Lescure says.
Since welcoming the Olympic Village, the Studios de Paris have gone through some major transformation with the construction of a little city, with restaurants, businesses and topnotch housing accommodations that Lescure says will be a game changer.
“I hadn’t been there since the Olympic Games so when Tarak showed me around I was blown away by how much the environment has been transformed,” he says. “The studios still have the same qualities, but in addition to that, all the infrastructure around it has been built and improved to have it become an ideal destination for French, Europeans and Americans. For everyone.”
Lescure, who will be in Los Angeles at the start of next year to take meeting with Ben Ammar during the Awards Season, says he’ll be leveraging the relationships he’s always had “with film talent, with studios, with producers, with directors, to tell them ‘Come and see.” One of the challenges he’ll be facing will be to counter some preconceived ideas over the cost of filming in France, which he says is actually cheaper than in the U.K. where crew members are paid more. The Studios of Paris is also located much closer to the center of the city than Pinewood is to London. Thanks to new rail lines that link the studio directly to central Paris and the Eurostar hub at Gare du Nord, “the Studios de Paris is now 25-minute away from central Paris, 15 minutes from the Bourget business airport and 35 minutes from Roissy airport,” says Lescure.
While U.S. President Donald Trump recently made new threats to impose a 100% tariff on movies produced outside the U.S., Ben Ammar says those declarations aren’t taken very seriously by Hollywood studios and even less by indie producers, notably because such a measure would be impracticable.
“During this incredibly troubled period, there is a movement towards Europe that’s happening,” Lescure says. “Even if France is in a mess politically speaking, our economy is not ruined and our film industry is still as powerful and indispensable as ever.”
