Translation does the trick for The Disappearance
Miniseries screenplay written in French, then translated and produced in English
Could this be a new model for exporting Quebec TV talent?
Joanne Forgues, president of Montreal-based Productions Casablanca, certainly thinks so, and she says other local producers are already following her lead. Forgues’ latest production, The Disappearance, was originally written in French by two local screenwriters, Normand Daneau and Geneviève Simard, then translated into English and shot in the language of Spielberg.
A number of shows first shot in French — like 19-2 and Les hauts et les bas de Sophie Paquin — were later adapted and produced in English. What’s unique about The Disappearance is that it was never produced en français.
Shooting wrapped recently on The Disappearance, after 54 days of production in Montreal, and the miniseries of six one-hour episodes is set to air on CTV this fall. It stars Peter Coyote, Aden Young, Camille Sullivan, Joanne Kelly, Michael Riendeau, Micheline Lanctôt and Kevin Parent.
The original idea was to do it en français and with the first three episodes penned in French by Daneau and Simard, Forgues took the project first to ICI Radio-Canada Télé. When the Montreal-based francophone public broadcaster turned the drama down, the producers turned to the specialty channel Séries+ and the channel decided to push ahead with the project. But then Séries+ was sold to Corus Entertainment, an offshoot of a deal that saw Bell Media take over Astral Media’s assets. With the change of ownership, the project once again found itself homeless.
That’s when the producers hit on the bright idea of translating the scripts and trying to interest an English-language broadcaster. Bell Media-owned CTV was immediately intrigued, and the Toronto-based TV network gave the producers the green-light to go into production in the spring of 2016.
Better yet, NBCUniversal International Studios came on board as the global distributor of the miniseries.
Forgues said other TV producers might try to follow the same path.
“I’ve heard from many Quebec producers who are in the process of translating their projects,” she said.
Coyote stars as 75-year-old Henry Sullivan, a former judge and prosecutor who moves in with his son Luke (Young) and his family. Henry is very close to his grandson Anthony; in the first episode, the 10-year-old disappears during a treasure hunt arranged by his grandfather.
The second episode takes place two years after the boy’s disappearance, which remains unexplained.
“It’s a Greek tragedy disguised as a contemporary thriller,” said Simard, in an interview on the set at the old Royal Victoria Hospital, which is now often used for film and TV shoots. “Nothing is black or white. It’s really about the family, more than about the police. And there are very complex relationships between the characters.”
Daneau added: “It’s not your usual thriller, where you follow the cops. This is totally different. It’s more like The Fall or The Killing. When we were writing it, we wanted it to be a Netflix/ HBO-type show. It’s not your classic cop show. We said: ‘Let’s do it the other way around. Let’s follow the victims.’ ”
The two police officers are played by Lanctôt and Parent.
Daneau, Simard and Forgues all underlined that making the show in English with CTV and NBCUniversal gave them more financial means. Forgues wouldn’t reveal the budget, but she did say that they would spend nine days shooting each one-hour episode. By way of comparison, the French-language Quebec show she recently produced, Série noire, averages nearly seven days of shooting per one-hour episode.
“It’s cool,” Daneau said. “It opens up our horizons. And let’s not beat around the bush — we have the kind of resources that we almost never have in French in Quebec. It’s fun because at the moment in Quebec, the budgets are so small, so you can’t write a show the way you’d like to write it. You have to write it based on a certain financial reality that is completely ridiculous. It’s castrating for an author. You can only have so many locations, so many scenes shot outside. We’re very lucky to be with CTV and to have the resources we have. If we have to go outside Quebec to do the shows we want to do, maybe we have a bit of a problem here. We could’ve made this show here in French but we would’ve had to make a million compromises because of the lower budget. We would’ve had to cut half of the locations. We would’ve had to cut characters.”