Picture Credits: Getty Images
Netflix confirmed this morning that production has just started on a new French movie based on the true story of the decades-long hunt for Gestapo head Klaus Barbie. With A-list talent attached and director Yvan Attal at the helm, here is everything we currently know about the project.
After the recent announcement of the sequel to Ad Vitam, Netflix France is wasting no time going into production on another project, a historical thriller based on a true story. The 9th movie by actor and director Yvan Attal is currently in production under the working title Projet K. The K is short for Klaus Barbie, one of the most notorious heads of the Nazi regime, who was a fugitive for four decades until he was finally arrested in Bolivia in 1983.
What is Projet K about?
Per the official synopsis:
Nothing destined Beate, a German, and Serge Klarsfeld, a French Jew, to meet. But their love and their shared thirst for justice would drive them to relentlessly hunt down Klaus Barbie, former head of the Gestapo in Lyon. A ten-year pursuit waged against every power that tried to stop them.
Who is starring in Projet K?
The thriller will be mostly in the French language, but boasts an international cast.
- Diane Kruger is starring as Beate Klarsfeld. She boasts a wide range of starring roles in French, German and English-speaking movies and television projects. She also won Best Actress in Cannes for In The Fade, and was seen in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, and more recently in the action movie The 355, and David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds. Even though this is, as far as we can tell, her first project for Netflix, she will also be seen as the wife of the French President in the Apple TV+ French original The Decision.
- Dany Boon is a French comedian boasting a blockbuster career in both movies and in very successful stand-up tours. He will star as Serge Klarsfeld, a historian and lawyer who was instrumental in hunting Barbie and gathering evidence leading to his arrest. Boon is now well known to Netflix subscribers, from his movie Stuck Together (where Yvan Attal had a starring role), to Murder Mystery 2 with Adam Sandler. He is also in post-production on his first series for Netflix, expected in 2027: Johnny Biloute.
- Tim Roth will star as Klaus Barbie. The British actor, just like Kruger, has dozens of starring credits in both movies and television, from Lie to Me to Reservoir Dogs, with additional credits including antagonist The Abomination in The Incredible Hulk and Shang-Chi. On the Netflix side, he was seen in the Peaky Blinders movie released last March.
Who is the creative crew and where is Projet K in production?
Director Yvan Attal is also cowriting Projet K with Laurent Turner. Attal was seen last year in a supporting role in Olivier Marchal‘s Squad 36. The movie is produced by Attal himself (Films Sous Influence) alongside Antoine Pezet and Jérôme Corcos (NAC Films). The shoot is set on location between France, Belgium and Bolivia; according to multiple reports, the production is currently shooting in downtown Lyon, the city where Klaus Barbie was the head of operations for the Gestapo from 1942 to 1945. Sequences are also planned in the Paris area, where Serge and Beate Klarsfeld were living at the time when the events of the movie are set.
When is Projet K released on Netflix?
No release date has been announced, though we can expect a release date in late 2027, or more likely early 2028, on Netflix.
