A series is being filmed in the Paris region with Michael Douglas in the role of Benjamin Franklin.

Adapted from a Pulitzer price

The series is produced by Apple TV+, and deals with Benjamin Franklin, played by Oscar-winning actor Michael Douglas. The story is adapted from Stacy Schiff’s Pullitzer Prize “A Great Improvisation : Franklin, France, and the Birth of America,” the series directed by Timothy Van Patten and written by Kirk Ellis. The filming of the series is moving all over Ile de France: they have been seen in the Marais and at the Palais Royal, but also close to the Montansier theater in Versailles.

A Franco-British cast

The main subject of the “biopic” is summed up in the strategic and political parades of Benjamin Franklin to convince France, then still under the monarchical regime, to support American democracy. To take on the role of one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Michael Douglas, surrounded by a renowned Franco-British cast : Ludivine Sagnier (Lupin) and Thibault de Montalembert (Ten percent) play opposite Noah Jupe ( Without a sound) or Eddie Marsan (The Gentlemen).

The figure of Benjamin Franklin has been of great interest to French cinema, whether it is the drama by Jean Dréville, where Orson Welles portrayed him in 1962 (La Fayette), or the comedy by Sacha Guitry If Versailles told me… , here again interpreted by the director of Citizen Kane. Michael Douglas himself played Franklin in an episode of Freedom: A History of US in 2003. In addition to this project, Michael Douglas will play another important figure in the United States, more recent this time, since he will play President Ronald Reagan in 2022 in the mini-series Reagan and Gorbachev, alongside Christoph Waltz.