“We want to make a very great film”: the release of the Johnny Hallyday biopic brought forward by several months

Will Cédric Jimenez’s film be presented at the Cannes Film Festival? The director and his producer, Hugo Selignac, reveal their ambitions in Le Parisien.

The change of actor seems to have worked very well.

A few months after replacing Raphaël Quenard, Benjamin Voisin is currently finishing filming the Johnny Hallyday biopic directed by Cédric Jimenez. And StudioCanal announces this week a new release date for this ambitious project produced by Hugo Selignac (Chi-Fou-Mi) which benefited from a budget of 40 million euros.

“Hugo called me during the Christmas holidays between December 24 and 31“, confided Benjamin Voisin to Paris Match a few months ago. “I think I didn’t immediately understand what he was offering me. It took me a few days to come down.” The actor took intense singing, dancing and guitar lessons at the beginning of the year to prepare for playing the youth idol.

In an exclusive report on the filming of Johnny, The Parisian describes 80 days of shooting between Paris, the provinces, London, Venice and Spain. “With our co-producers, Studiocanal and TF1, as well as our partners, Canal + and Netflix, we want to make a very great film, very generous, very ambitious“, explains Hugo Sélignac daily.

“I don’t want to make a documentary or a Wikipedia film“, assures Cédric Jimenez for his part. “With the screenwriter Olivier Demangel, we worked a lot to fully tell Johnny Hallyday, but also Jean-Philippe Smet. Johnny obviously addresses the great moments of his life and the essential events of his incredible story. But I also want to address his intimacy, his fragilities, and tell all the facets of this complex and multiple character..”

Originally scheduled for December 8, 2027, Johnny will finally arrive in theaters five months earlier, precisely on June 30, 2027. Enough to speculate on a preview presentation at the Cannes Film Festival as was the case last year for The Battle of Gaulle Or The Count of Monte Cristo in 2024. Selignac rather evokes the “tremendous dynamic of the Cinema Festival (June 27 to 30) to immediately create an event“.

The film will recount the beginnings of the famous singer, up to his 50th birthday concerts at the Parc des Princes, in 1993. Nina Meurisse (Nathalie Baye), Noée Abita (Sylvie Vartan), Marie Colomb (Nanette Workman), William Lebghil (Michel Berger) and Laura Smet (Johnny Hallyday’s daughter will play her own grandmother, Huguette Clerc) complete the cast.

The Parisian reveals other names: José Garcia and Sami Outalbali will play Johnny Stark and Jean Pons, the impresarios of Hallyday, and Fred Testot the producer Jean-Claude Camus.