Saint Laurent Productions has boarded Jacques Audiard’s ‘Emilia Perez’

After making its debut at last year’s Cannes Film Festival with Jean-Luc Godard’s last work and Pedro Almodóvar’s “Strange Way of Life,” Anthony Vaccarello‘s Saint Laurent Productions has boarded Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Perez” as a co-producer.

The musical thriller joins Saint Laurent Productions’ roster of prestige projects, including Oscar-winning director Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope,” David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds,” and the next films from Abel Ferrara, Wong Kar Wai, Jim Jarmusch and Gaspar Noé.

“Emilia Perez” is a musical thriller boasting an international cast led by Karla Sofia Gascón, Zoe Saldana (“Avatar”), Selena Gomez (“Only Murders in the Building”), Edgar Ramirez (“Carlos”) and Adriana Paz. The movie is co-produced with French production company Why Not Productions and Page 114, together with Pathé and France 2 Cinema. Pathé has acquired French distribution rights and will release the movie in French theaters.

The movie, which Audiard described as an “opera libretto in four acts,” stars Gascón, a rising Argentinian trans actor, as a feared Mexican cartel leader who undergoes a sex change to get away from the law, becoming the woman he’s always wanted to be.

The Palme d’Or winning director assembled a stellar creative team, including composer Clement Ducol, singer, songwriter/composer Camille, and choreographer Damien Jalet. Vaccarell created the costumes for the…