The French box office market has been morose lately, but French producer Hugo Selignac has been somewhat immune to the ongoing gloom.
A hip Parisian who speaks his mind, chain-smokes and loves to win, Selignac has often found himself behind every other local hit, with bold movies such as Gilles Lellouche’s “Beating Hearts,” Quentin Dupieux’s “The Second Act,” or this year’s “I Love Peru,” co-directed by actor-turned-filmmaker Raphael Quenard — all of which opened at the Cannes Film Festival and have played well in theaters, including with younger audiences.
Sharing the same owner as Brad Pitt’s Plan B (Mediawan), Selignac’s Chi-Fou-Mi Productions is now ready to start a new chapter with his most ambitious film to date, Cedric Jimenez’s €40-million dystopian thriller “Dog 51.” The latter is world premiering on closing night of the Venice Film Festival and will have its North American premiere at Toronto. Selignac will also soon be making his English-language producing debut with Dupieux’s next two projects, as well as Carax’s long-gestated follow up to his Marion Cotillard-Adam Driver musical romance “Annette;” and has projects set up with Alain Chabat and Jonathan Cohen.
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Speaking to Variety ahead of “Dog 51″‘s Venice premiere, Selignac pointed out the film marked his 13th collaboration with long-standing partner Studiocanal and his boldest bet so far. Studiocanal had already made their largest investment on a French movie with “Beating Hearts” and it turned out to become the group’s biggest French hit, having grossed over $36 million from 5 million admissions in France in 2024-2025. It’s also Jimenez’s third film with Selignac, following a pair of successful contemporary thrillers “The Stronghold” and “November,” which played at Cannes.
“We had a great book by Laurent Gaudé and a strong script, written by Olivier Demangel and Cedric Jimenez, we had a cast, we had ambition, we also had this very close relationship with the same partners – StudioCanal, Netflix, France Televisions — and that’s a winning team because we’re rolling off of ‘The Stronghold,’ ‘November,’ ‘Beating Hearts,’” said Selignac during an interview at his swank Paris office overlooking the Tuileries gardens.
“‘Dog 51’ was driven once again by our desire to make movies that become events that speaks to audiences, that have a real cinematic quality, with great actors, a wild mise-en-scene, and that stand out in some ways because we have fun doing things that are different and original,” Selignac says, adding that “Dog 51” does share some similarities with “The Stronghold” and “November” in that it revolves around cops, but it’s set in a near-future ruled by AI.
Starring two of France’s most bankable actors, Adèle Exarchopoulos (“Beating Hearts”) and Gilles Lellouche (“The Stronghold”), “Dog 51” is set in a near future, in Paris. The city is segregated into three zones separating social classes, with checkpoints regulating movement between them. People’s lives are being monitored by Alma, a powerful predictive AI which has revolutionized the police system to curb crimes. But when Alma creator is murdered, Salia, an elite agent from Zone 2, and Zem, a disillusioned cop who lives amongst the outcasts in Zone 3, are forced to team up to lead the investigation and form a powerful bond. The cast is completed by Louis Garrel, Artus, Romain Duris and Thomas Bangalter, half of the pioneering French electronic duo Daft Punk who plays the enigmatic creator of Alma.
The movie, which features impressive action and vfx, has the full scope and scale of a proper science-fiction film that French filmmakers have seldom dared to venture into, with the exception of Luc Besson, notably with “The Fifth Element” and more recently with “Valerian.” “Dog 51” almost didn’t make it to Venice. It came out of post-production only days before the premiere on the Lido. From there, it will play at Toronto before being released in France on Oct. 16, the same release date as “Beating Hearts.”
Last year, ‘Beating Hearts’ sold 5 million admissions and was released on Oct. 16 so when we saw, in the middle of filming ‘Dog51,’ that that same release date was available we jumped on it,” says Selignac, who might be slightly superstitious. But, as he notes it, “Beating Hearts” wrapped shooting way before “Dog 51.” ‘We still need to add some special effects and mixing!” he says.
Having never tackled a movie with that level of budget, Selignac says one of his obsessions with “Dog 51” is the maximize the production value.
“Hearing that €40 million are noticeable on screen is the more significant compliment to me because when you ask financiers for a lot of money, you don’t want to disappoint them,” he says, before adding that “the success of a film is not really something that we can control, but if a financier tells me, ‘Damn I gave you a lot of money, but it shows on screen,’ at least that’s an accomplishment. They didn’t feel that they got robbed!” he says with a laugher. On top of returning partners, Selignac also secured a French brand, Lacoste, to complete the financing.
Earlier this week, “Dog 51” also screened for exhibitors from the major cinema chains, Pathé, CGR, Kinepolis, MK2 and UGC. “They were floored and some of them said it could be the film that wakes up the market,” Selignac says, alluding to the ongoing box office crisis in France. “Theatrical admissions are catastrophic so I hope we can help stir things in the right direction with ‘Dog 51,” the producer continues.
Aside from the action scenes and visual effects, the movie also boasts a memorable score, including one of Pink Floyd’s most iconic songs, “Wish You Were Here.”
Asked how he pulled it off, Selignac says. “We just paid. It was a lot of money, but that’s cool. It’s one of the best songs in the world.”
“That’s part of the joy of having a budget that fits your ambitions, you can do things,” he says, “like the big U.S. indies, where the score often plays a big part in triggering a strong emotional impact, and a lasting one.”
Ultimately, Selignac says the biggest cost on a movie like “Dog 51” comes from the action scenes that “necessitate an enormous amount of scenes so that the editing can have a quick pace,” says the producer, flagging that one of largest action scene lasts 10 minutes and required two weeks of filming.
Like Jimenez’s previous two movies, there is a social and political subtext in “Dog 51,” which Selignac was important to weave in a subtle way. While the film can easily be described as a science fiction movie, the producer jokes that Jimenez didn’t follow the footsteps of Steven Spielberg who spent six months in Steve Jobs’ office to come up with the big idea of “Minority Report.” “Cedric was more compelled by the idea of following these “characters, staying closing to their emotions, having some action and a societal backdrop.”
“He wanted to talk mainly about characters who are a bit disconnected from life, who find each other and together lay the foundation for a national uprising. So it was very human, always. In fact, ‘Bac Nord,’ and in ‘November,’ it was about people fighting against the system, and in ‘Dog 51’ it’s about people who, as they investigate, become the targets of a system that wants to destroy them and they will try to get out of it,” he says.
On the horizon, Selignac is developing even bigger projects, including one that will reunite him once again with Jimenez and take the filmmaker somewhat out of his comfort zone. The project, whose exact plot remains under wrap, is a film charting the life of Johnny Halliday, the late French rockstar who was nicknamed the French Elvis. Johnny will be played by Quenard, with a script that Jimenez penned by Demangel. The movie will start filming in the Spring.
On Chi-Fou-Mi’s slate is also Dupieux’s next two English-language projects which have attracted A-list actors, Selignac says, pointing that American actors are fond of Dupieux’s free-spirited breed of comedy.
While he continues working with the same directors, Selignac is also bringing new ones into the fold, including French auteur Leos Carax, who is believed to be working on an even bigger project than “Anette,” which opened Cannes in 2021. The producer is also tackling a new opus in the “Asterix and Obelix” franchise that will be directed by French comedy master Jonathan Cohen.
