StudioCanal Selling International Rights to ‘Petite Vampire’ at Cannes 2016

The Cannes Film Festival is not just about film studios making giant deals for indie film projects. Studios also bring their films to the festival in a bid to sell their international rights to distributors.

UK film/TV fixture StudioCanal is one such example. While its search continues for an American distributor for Aardman’s 2018 prehistoric comedy Early Man, that’s not the only project it has on deck.

A recent report on Deadline revealed that StudioCanal and French comics artist and filmmaker Joann Sfar (The Rabbi’s Cat, Aya of Yop City, and one segment of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet) are prepping an animated adaptation of Sfar’s own comic series Petite Vampire. Sfar will direct the film and produce under his Autochenille Production banner, while StudioCanal will co-produce and is currently selling the international rights at Cannes right now.

The film will be an original story that will combine elements from the first volume of the comic. The story of the comics and film revolves around the titular character, a bored 10-year-old vampire who wants to go to school and make friends after 300 years of existence. He eventually befriends someone who isn’t a vampire: a misbehaving orphan boy named Michael. The boys embark on a friendship that is constantly challenged by Gibus, a supernatural moon-headed creature who wants to destroy the vampire community.

Petite Vampire is a reteam for Sfar and StudioCanal, as they both worked together on his live-action directorial debut Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life. It also marks StudioCanal’s expansion into animation and family fare (Paddington, Shaun the Sheep Movie, Early Man).

What do you think? Are you looking forward to Petite Vampire?

Edited by: Hannah Wilkes