On October 18, TNT will premiere Transporter: The Series, a high-octane TV series based on Luc Besson's hit action-film franchise about a courier who will deliver anything, anywhere — no questions asked, reports The Hollywood Reporter.
Transporter: The Series is notable not only for its bumpy road to TNT. (Its first season, seen worldwide in 2012, had been sold to Cinemax, which decided not to air it. But international ratings success, particularly in France and Canada, led Transporter's French producer Atlantique to greenlight a second season.) The show also represents a low-profile but steady trend in international TV: French-made series in English are invading American airwaves, reversing the typical model by which U.S. studios sell their shows around the world.
TNT bought two seasons of Transporter: The Series in a straight acquisition deal, a first for the channel. In addition to Transporter, NBC's sleeper hit Hannibal is from Gaumont International Television, the small-screen arm of the venerable French film company. Gaumont's slate also includes the horror series Hemlock Grove, which Netflix has renewed for a third season, and the anticipated drug drama Narcos, also for Netflix.
Besson's shingle, EuropaCorp, does not produce Transporter: The Series but has its own American success. Its TV division scored its first major U.S. sale when NBC picked up Taxi Brooklyn — a New York-set spinoff of the Besson-penned 1998 action comedy film Taxi — which was a moderate hit this summer. Elsewhere, Tandem Communications, a division of France's StudioCanal, produces the Europe-set procedural Crossing Lines, which premiered on NBC in 2013 before moving to Netflix. StudioCanal has greenlighted several English-language dramas straight to series, including the London-set crime drama Spotless and Sex, Lies and Handwriting, a Bones-style procedural set in the world of handwriting analysis.
On the adaptation front, A&E is in production on The Returned, a U.S. version of the creepy French zombie series Les Revenants; Endemol Studios (Hell on Wheels) has picked up remake rights to the crime drama Engrenages; and HBO is developing an English-language version of the French prostitution drama Maison Close.
"There's kind of a French wave right now," says Pascal Breton, producer of Marseille, a political series billed as the French House of Cards that Netflix has commissioned.
Read more of this report from The Hollywood Reporter.