Vendôme Group Restructures: Paris Producers Move Up as Leadership Focuses on English-Language Bet
TL;DR: Vendôme Group, the Oscar-winning production company behind CODA, has promoted two French producers — Éric Jehelmann and Jonathan Blumental — to Co-Chief Creative Officers of its Paris operations. The move frees co-founders Philippe Rousselet and Fabrice Gianfermi to focus on Emotion Pictures, a new English-language commercial slate with Morten Tyldum directing and a cast that includes Toni Collette, Bill Nighy, and Stephen Graham.
The Quiet Split That Changes Everything
Vendôme Group just reorganized itself in a way that looks simple on the surface but actually signals something bigger: the company is betting it can run two completely different production operations at once.
On one track, Éric Jehelmann and Jonathan Blumental — both long-term partners inside the Vendôme ecosystem — have been named Co-Chief Creative Officers of the group's French entities, effective immediately. They'll manage all French-language development and production from the Paris office.
On the other track, co-founders Philippe Rousselet and Fabrice Gianfermi are stepping back from day-to-day French operations to focus entirely on Emotion Pictures, a new venture that's already in production on English-language commercial films with serious cast attached.
Here's what matters: neither side is ceremonial. Both teams are running real slate. The question is whether this split actually works at scale.
Who's Running French Production Now
Deadline confirmed the appointments on May 13, 2026, filing the story from Cannes. Jehelmann and Blumental don't inherit empty titles. They bring functioning production banners with them.
Éric Jehelmann continues heading Jerico Films, which produced the 2014 French-language hit La Famille Bélier — the same film that later became CODA, the three-time Oscar winner that changed everything for Vendôme. He also runs Jerico TV alongside Anne Voirin. His track record spans theatrical releases like Pierre Niney's Promise at Dawn, plus television work across drama and comedy.
Jonathan Blumental leads Prélude Films, a label with credits including Michel Hazanavicius' The Lost Prince and the Prime Video series Ourika. That Hazanavicius connection matters — he won the Best Director Oscar in 2012 for The Artist, so Blumental's relationships in prestige circles run deep.
Ninon Desplat, who's been overseeing production and development at Vendôme Films since 2022, moves up to Producer and Head of Productions and Development of Films and TV, essentially expanding her operational footprint across both theatrical and streaming projects.
It's not a theoretical promotion. The Paris office now has three producers with track records managing three separate labels simultaneously. That's either smart delegation or a bottleneck waiting to happen. Hard to say which without watching execution.
Emotion Pictures: Why This Restructuring Actually Matters
The real story isn't the French promotions. It's that Rousselet and Gianfermi are now free to build Emotion Pictures without managing day-to-day French production overhead.
Emotion Pictures is a co-production with Pathé and Merit France, and it's focused on English-language commercial films. The first major project is Ibelin, directed by Morten Tyldum, the guy who made The Imitation Game (2014, which grossed $233.6 million worldwide) and Passengers (2016). The ensemble includes Charlie Plummer, Stephen Graham, Toni Collette, Isabela Merced, Maisy Stella, and Bill Nighy.
That cast lineup isn't accidental. Those are working actors with genuine commercial pull. Pairing them with Tyldum signals Emotion Pictures isn't just hunting festival laurels. It's building toward theatrical releases with mainstream appeal.
According to Deadline's reporting, Emotion Pictures has 10 additional projects in development beyond Ibelin. The slate is real. Production on Ibelin is already underway, which suggests a 2026 or early 2027 release window is plausible. No streaming deal has been announced, but Pathé co-productions with that cast typically get picked up quickly.
Why CODA Matters for Understanding What Vendôme Does
CODA won three Academy Awards at the 2022 Oscars, including Best Picture. Troy Kotsur won Best Supporting Actor. The film starred Emilia Jones, Marlee Matlin, and Daniel Durant, ran 111 minutes, and was directed by Sian Heder. It premiered at Sundance before Apple TV+ acquired it for theatrical and streaming distribution — reportedly for $25 million, a record at the time for the festival.
Here's the thing: CODA didn't start in Los Angeles. It started as a French film called La Famille Bélier, produced in 2014 by Jerico Films, the same label Jehelmann now runs. Vendôme's whole model is built on identifying French-language material with emotional universality, then finding the international path, whether through remakes or direct distribution.
That's not luck. It's a repeatable formula. Prélude Films' Ourika landing on Prime Video is another data point. When you've got producers connected to Oscar-winning directors like Hazanavicius, and you've already cracked the code once with CODA, you don't restructure unless you're confident the system scales.
The Operational Question Nobody's Asking
What I keep coming back to: can Jehelmann and Blumental actually manage three production labels simultaneously while serving in a group-level CCO role? That's supervision across theatrical, television, streaming — multiple genres, multiple budgets, multiple partners.
Previous group-level roles at major production companies tend to have dedicated presidents or heads of production handling operational overhead. The announcement says Ninon Desplat takes on "Head of Productions and Development," but it doesn't clarify where the day-to-day production management sits.
On the L.A. side, the structure is clearer. Kathryn Thal continues as Senior Vice President of Development and Production across Vendôme Pictures and Emotion Pictures. Ejiah Rousselet joins as creative executive. That's scaffolding. The Paris side feels thinner.
Magma Productions, led by Mallory Vabre and Anne-Charlotte Homasson, continues under the broader Vendôme umbrella, but its role in the restructured group wasn't detailed in Deadline's report. Worth watching for clarity on that.
Where to Watch Vendôme's Existing Slate in India and Globally
If you haven't seen CODA yet, watch it. Full stop. The dinner-table scene where Ruby signs a song for her deaf parents while the soundtrack drops to silence (you feel the absence physically) is reason enough. It's available on Apple TV+ across India, the US, and the UK with English subtitles and regional options.
Ourika, the Prélude Films production, streams on Prime Video in multiple territories, including India.
For upcoming Emotion Pictures releases, specifically Ibelin, streaming availability hasn't been announced, but given the Pathé co-production structure and the talent involved, it'll likely land on a major platform. Movie OTT's tracker keeps current on where European co-productions end up regionally, so that's worth checking as release dates solidify.
Honestly, Indian audiences have shown real appetite for prestige foreign-language content since Parasite. A production company that's now splitting into two distinct lanes, maintaining French-language quality while scaling English-language commercial reach, is well-positioned to keep feeding that appetite. You'll see Emotion Pictures titles on Indian streamers. Count on it.
What Actually Changes in the Next Six Months
Production on Ibelin is already happening, which means we'll likely see first footage or premiere announcements by late 2026. Cannes 2026 is the logical venue for major sales conversations or distributor announcements, and that's exactly where Deadline published this report from.
For the Paris side, Jehelmann and Blumental need to prove they can maintain output pace across Jerico, Prélude, and Vendôme Films simultaneously. If output drops or quality slips, you'll know the structure isn't working. If they keep feeding the pipeline while Emotion Pictures scales, that's the real test.
One metric to watch: how many French-language projects does Vendôme announce for 2026-2027 compared to 2024-2025? That'll tell you whether the restructuring freed up bandwidth or just created a bottleneck with a different name.
The Bigger Strategic Bet
Most coverage of this restructuring, Deadline's included, frames it as a straightforward leadership shuffle. The more interesting read: Vendôme is attempting something that StudioCanal and Gaumont have tried with mixed results over the past decade, running a serious French-language operation alongside an English-language commercial slate under one corporate roof, but doing it at roughly a quarter of their headcount. That's not ambition. That's a bet on structure over scale.
The difference is real. StudioCanal has hundreds of employees and dedicated divisions per territory. Vendôme is trying to replicate the output model with two co-CCOs, one head of production, and a handful of creative executives split between Paris and L.A. It requires different creative instincts, different deal structures, different talent relationships. But if it works, if Emotion Pictures delivers commercially while the French entities keep producing prestige material, Vendôme becomes a genuinely interesting hybrid player in a market that doesn't have many of them.
The restructuring isn't a crisis response. Architecturally sound. Execution is everything now.
