‘Under Paris’ Shark Movie Director on Sequel Plans, Olympics Criticism

French shark movie “Under Paris” made a sneak attack on worldwide streaming last week, scoring the best launch for a non-English language film on Netflix with 41 million views in its five first days on the service.

Dropping a month before the start of the summer Olympics in Paris, the movie about triathlon athletes who get devoured during a swimming race in the Seine river ranked first on Netflix’s top 10 for non-English language films across 93 countries. “Under Paris” was even praised by horror master Stephen King, who admitted he initially thought it “would be a jokey movie, like ‘Sharnado’” and found it it “really quite good.” “The last 25 minutes were amazing,” King said on X.

It’s quite an achievement for a movie which on paper was clearly not an easy sell, “Under Paris” filmmaker Xavier Gens tells Variety. The project was turned down by French studios and financiers before Netflix came on board, says Gens, director of genre movies such as 2007’s “Hitman” and “Mayhem!” in addition to episodes of “Lupin.”

“People in France didn’t dare touch it. It’s a film that couldn’t have been produced and financed in the traditional circuit because folks assumed that shark movies could only be made by Americans or Koreans,” he says. Ultimately, the movie was produced with a budget in the €15-to-€20 million range ($16 million-$21 million), a large price tag by French standards. The budget was…