Steven Michaels and Jonathan Koch will serve as executive producers on the project.
The Kennedys producer Asylum Entertainment has cemented its next project.
The Los Angeles-based entertainment company has snagged North American remake rights to the French television show Braquo for a potential U.S. series in a deal negotiated by U.K.'s Zodiak Rights. Steven Michaels, Asylum's president and CEO, and Jonathan Koch, president and CCO, will serve as executive producers.
Created by Olivier Marchal and executive produced by Claude Chelli and Herve Chabalier at Capa Drama, Braquo is a dark police series that follows a Paris cop squad who live on the edge of the law, often using violence and intimidation to complete the job. But the cops' lives are dramatically changed when the squad leader commits suicide after being wrongly accused of corruption.
"We've had some initial conversations about it," Jonathan Koch tells The Hollywood Reporter of adapting the property to U.S. sensibilities. "But I think when we have an opportunity to understand where it's going to land here in the U.S., we'll have a better chance to decide how we need to adapt. Our goals going in is to keep it as much like the original as possible."
He adds: "It's important that we keep all the elements. Whatever distributor we end up with, that's going to be part of the conversation we have with them."
But Koch acknowledged that could also mean, in effect, modifying the format slightly. "There is some appetite at the U.S. networks and distributors to have some standalone elements in there that could come to a conclusion in every episode," Koch says. "We may be able to embed some of those opportunities into the first season."
The French series averaged 1.3 million total viewers, the highest number for an original scripted drama on France's premium cable channel Canal+ and won the best fiction prize at the 2011 Prix De L' Export. The series' second season, consisting of eight episodes, launched in November 2011.
