“We Had The Ability But Weren’t Allowed To Tell These Stories”: Quoc Dang Tran, Creator Of Disney+’s First French-Language Drama ‘Parallèles’, Hails The Streaming Revolution
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: The streaming revolution has finally gifted European creatives the opportunity to write sci-fi and other genres, according to Quoc Dang Tran, the creator of Disney+’s first French-language drama Parallèles.Speaking exclusively to Deadline on the eve of the teen drama’s launch, Netflix’s Marianne creator said he came up with the idea more than a decade ago but there had been “no outlet for sci-fi” and other genres in non-English-language territories.“Writers like me felt that we had the ability to tell these stories but weren’t allowed to do so,” he said. “For a while if it was fiction it had to be British or American.
Some gave up the dream and others persisted.”Reflecting on the current state of play, Dang Tran credited the streamers with “creating an electric shock” in the content market.Disney+ alone is creating around one-third of its 60 planned non-U.S.
originals in Europe over the next two years and Parallèles, which is co-written with Beyond Appearances’ Anastasia Heinzl and directed by Benjamin Rocher and Jean-Baptiste Saurel, is set to be the first in the French language.Starring Thomas Chomel (Clem), Omar Mebrouk (HPI, Les Invisibles), Jules Houplain (The Promise, The Innocents) and Jade Pedri (Ils étaient dix), Empreinte Digitale and Daïmôn Films’ six-parter tells the story of four friends whose lives are turned upside down when a mysterious event scatters the group into different timelines.
The four teenagers will do all they can to understand what has happened and try to get back to the carefree innocence of their former lives.Dang Tran, who has also written for Call My Agent!
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