Quentin Lee’s ‘Morning, Paris!’ Series Mania Pitch Melds Comedy, Romance and Asian Ambition (EXCLUSIVE)
20.03.2024 - 10:03
/ variety.com
Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief
Fashion, East-West Asian identities, corporate espionage and romance are on the agenda in “Morning, Paris!,” a new mini-series project being pitched at Series Mania by veteran filmmaker Quentin Lee (“The People I’ve Slept With,” “White Frog”).
“’Morning, Paris!’ is a heartfelt comedy about a young modern BIPOC Canadian woman discovering herself in the most romantic city in the world,” says Lee. “Or put another way, it is a limited television series about an aspiring female fashion designer from Vancouver who ends up in Paris Fashion week with a very unlikely companion because she wants to spy on her boss on whom she has a crush.
It’s ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ meets Robert Atman’s ‘Prêt-à-Porter’ with the sensibility of Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’.”
The project was not always so simply defined. It was previously conceived as a feature film that was pitched at the Golden Horse Film Festival a decade ago, and which mainland China powerhouse China Film Group agreed to co-finance and co-produce.
With Robert Wei and Aaron Shershow on board as producers, the film began pre-production in Prague in late 2015 and had incurred nearly $1 million of costs.
But, when part of the finance collapsed, the other financiers bailed and preparations came to a halt.
“We had cast the hottest Chinese talents of the time, Michelle Chen Yanxi and Chan Xiao, who were going to marry in real life, as the star-crossed lovers. Unfortunately, the one-third investor dropped out… and because the producers were not able to fill the gap, the production ultimately fell apart.
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