Netflix bets big on Richard Linklater's homage to Breathless

Netflix understands how to take overseas projects and turn them into greatness. In the streamer's latest move, an overseas movie involves an American director who made an homage to a classic French film. The mix should be wonderful.

The director is Richard Linklater, who you know from Boyhood and the Before Sunrise trilogy, among many other fantastic works. He recently had a film shown at the Cannes Film Festival called Nouvelle Vague, which is an ode to French New Wave films, and especially Breathless. The movie received an 11-minute standing ovation at Cannes.

Breathless was directed by the incredible Jean-Luc Godard and followed the story of a doomed love affair between an American and an overly idealistic Frenchman. Nouvelle Vague follows the making of that film, but is more about the filmmaking world in general. Many of the characters are based on famous actors.

Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague snatched up by Netflix

Netflix has snatched up the distribution rights to Linklater's film for $4 million, according the Deadline. The amount appears to be the second-highest paid for a foreign-language film. The highest-paid was also by Netflix for Emilia Pérez. That movie garnered a lot of award nominations, though it was mostly shut out at the Oscars.

The same might not hold true of Linklater's French-language project. The Academy is used to nominating Linklater for things, as he has five previous nods. He has yet to win, and his last nods were from 2015's Boyhood, so potentially the Academy thinks it's his time to take home some trophies.

The cast of Nouvelle Vague includes Guillaume Marbeck as director Godard, Zoey Deutch as Jean Sedberg, and Aubry Dullian as Jean Paul Belmondo.

There is also a teaser for the film available for viewing. Even the trailer looks worthy of winning an award, and you might want to immediately rush out and see the film once it is released. The guess would be that Netflix sticks it in theaters for at least two weeks to meet Academy standards for potential nominees. After that, it's all ours on Netflix.

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