Emilia Perez director Jacques Audiard has an idea for a prequel movie.
Emilia Pérez is a new musical crime comedy movie directed by Audiard. Based on Audiard’s opera libretto of the same name, the film stars Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, and more.
What did Jacques Audiard say about a potential Emilia Perez prequel?
Speaking at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival, via IndieWire, Audiard revealed he had ideas for an Emilia Pérez prequel; although, he doesn’t seem committed to making the movie at this point in time.
“If Audiard had the energy, he would write the prequel to Emilia Pérez, showing what Manitas was like when he was struggling with Emilia Pérez deep inside him,” IndieWire’s article reads.
Audiard said, “It would be a movie about the time when Manitas is already Emilia, but they’re also the drug kingpin, OK?”
Emilia Pérez held its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in May. After holding its North American premiere at Telluride, the film was also shown at the Toronto International Film Festival. It received a limited theatrical release earlier this year and is now available to stream on Netflix.
“From renegade auteur Jacques Audiard comes Emilia Pérez, an audacious fever dream that defies genres and expectations,” the synopsis for the movie reads. “Through liberating song and dance and bold visuals, this odyssey follows the journey of four remarkable women in Mexico, each pursuing their own happiness. The fearsome cartel leader Emilia (Karla Sofía Gascón) enlists Rita (Zoe Saldaña), an unappreciated lawyer stuck in a dead-end job, to help fake her death so that Emilia can finally live authentically as her true self.”
Audiard previously told Netflix’s Tudum about the movie, “During the first lockdown, I wrote a treatment quickly, and I realized along the way that it was closer to an opera libretto than to a film script — it was broken down into acts, there were few sets, the characters were archetypal. The idea of doing an opera had crossed my mind as I was working on [1996’s] A Self-Made Hero.”