‘The Big War’ First Look: Iconic French WWII Graphic Novel Gets a Big-Budget Adaptation From Mathieu Kassovitz (EXCLUSIVE)

“The Big War,” one of Europe’s most ambitious feature projects brought to market at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is heading the AFM with some incredible new graphics for its CG animal cast.

Inspired by the iconic two-part graphic novel “La Bête Est Morte,” written by Edmond-François Calvo during the Nazi occupation of France during World War II and published just after the liberation of Paris, “The Big War” is helmed by “La Haine” director Mathieu Kassovitz and produced by leading French producer Aton Soumache, whose recent credits include Annecy winner “Little Nicholas – Happy as Can Be” and Netflix’s mega-hit “Miraculous: Ladybug & Cat Noir, the Movie.”

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Given that the original book has very little by way of narrative, longtime Tim Burton collaborator Caroline Thompson, the award-winning screenwriter of “Edward Scissorhands” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” was recruited to adapt the screenplay. Former Cannes Film Festival president and Canal+ co-founder Pierre Lescure serves as the film’s associate producer.

“The Big War” will be shot over five weeks next summer before animators take over to produce the film’s characters. The film should be finished in late 2026 or early 2027.

Ahead of this year’s AFM, Kassovitrz and Soumache sat down with Variety to discuss the project’s origins, telling a story the whole family can share and why their ambitions far outweigh the film’s eye-catching €30 million budget. They also shared a teaser poster and a pre-poster for the project, giving us a first look at the incredible craftsmanship that will go into creating the cast of woodland creatures.

As we can see with today’s artwork, the characters in this film will be entirely animated, but everything else will be shot in live action. How are you planning to integrate the footage?

Mathieu Kassovitz: Everything will be real. We don’t have a lot of humans in the film, but we should forget that the animals are animated. I understand your compulsion to say it’s animated, but you must understand mine, that this is not an animated film. Only the characters will be animated, and we are telling the artists that these characters should be competing for awards. They are going to break people’s hearts.

Soumache: I want to do a really great hybrid movie, but one with a real live action feel. We want everything we shoot to be real. So when we do scenes that would normally need to be animated, like inside a tree, for example, instead, we’re going to build a set that is the inside of the tree and then add in the CG puppets. We want to use all the best parts of live action and CG animation. We want this to be a real, live-action movie like Scorsese or Spielberg or Nolan would do, just with animals. So it’s “Saving Private Ryan” meets “Paddington.”

Given that the source material for this film is a graphic novel enjoyed by people of all ages in France, is the goal to do something similar with the film?

Kassovitz: This is very much a kids’ film. That’s who we’re aiming at first, from six, seven, eight years old, and their brothers and sisters, then their parents and their grandparents. For a five-year-old, it’s an adventure movie. For a 15-year-old, it’s a movie about World War II. If you’re 22, it’s about the Nazi’s extermination of the Jewish people. And if you’re 50, you’ll know every detail and why we chose to include them. But we were clear: for kids from 5-to 10, this is an adventure movie about rabbits being chased through the woods by dogs.

Aton Soumache: I say we are going to kids from seven to 77. We want to be honest and respect the audience. That’s why we got a great writer in Caroline Thompson, who did “Edward Scissorhands” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

How close will your film be to the original book?

Kassovitz: For the story, the book has very little to do with what we will do, but the book is the DNA of what we will do. The book was written during World War II and released right around the liberation of Paris. The book has no characters, no dialogue, and it’s just a day-by-day story about survival during the war. They were all symbolic stories that became part of the culture of World War II. The book is so important.

This is your first kids’ movie. What made you want to do something for a younger audience?

Kassovitz: I’m making this film because my master is Steven Spielberg, and he always will be. I will take this as seriously as he would. I’ve never done a movie for kids, but if he did this, I know the kind of movie he would have made, a grownup movie for kids where you talk to the kids, but you want their parents and grandparents to watch it with them, and they can talk afterward.

Have you had discussions about distribution? This sounds like the kind of film that should be watched by groups of people rather than sitting at home alone, especially for young people.

Soumache: I want this movie to be theatrical; I don’t want it to go right to streaming. I believe we will make a movie that must be experienced in a theater and shared between parents, kids, grandparents, and teenagers. And in the future, we need to be launched on free-to-air. Each year, when they need Christmas programming or holiday season programming, we want this movie to be replayed country by country. I worry that if we go to a streamer, people might watch it the day it comes out and love it, but forget about it when something else comes along and then never see it again. I think we are losing something by not respecting the uniqueness of the momentum going to the movies creates, and something that might be a masterpiece can get lost. So, as much as I can, I will push for a theatrical release.

It’s easy to look at the €30 million budget and talk about how ambitious this film is in commercial terms. But what do you want to accomplish as a filmmaker by adapting this book, one you’ve had the rights to for nearly two decades?

Kassovitz: We’ve already done every kind of movie about World War II. We’ve covered everything, and although there will certainly still be wonderful movies made about the war, I want ours to sum everything up because it will talk to who we are when we’re innocent. Kids don’t understand war; they get corrupted by grownups, but at first, it’s not part of their lives. They’re protected. But that’s not always the case. We know there are kids who are not protected at all, and for them, war is often like a game. So, presenting it as a game with different layers of comprehension will allow the film to accompany them as they grow up. It’s ambitious, but that’s what we’re aiming at, and it’s the core of our job if you ask why we’re doing this.