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French writer and showrunner Fanny Herrero will be honored as Deadline’s 2025 French TV Disruptor at the Rendez-Vous market next month.

Herrero’s long list of credits includes the hit series Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent in English). The comedy drama about a fictional Paris-based talent agency featured a long list of star cameos. It launched on France Televisions before becoming a global hit on Netflix. It has spawned numerous international remakes and there has long been talk of the French cast getting back together.

Herrero has also written on shows including Les Bleus for M6, Odysseus for Arte and Kaboul Kitchen for Canal+. She created shows including Drôle for Netflix, about the lives of young stand-up comics in Paris.

Outside of TV she was on the team that designed the opening ceremony for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games alongside novelist Leïla Slimani, historian Patrick Boucheron, and artistic director Thomas Jolly.

French writer and director Fanny Herrero is best known internationally as the showrunner behind Paris talent agency comedy-drama Call My Agent!, which was a hit in its original version and has since spawned a raft of remakes.

She has recently added a new string to her bow as one of the co-writers of the much talked about Paris 2024 Olympics opening ceremony, which unfolded under torrential rain on the River Seine on Friday.

This credit will likely also boost her international footprint, or perhaps, her notoriety, given the wildly differing responses to the show, which embraced diversity and inclusion and brazenly explored history and tradition with an unapologetically contemporary take, at the same time as being the first Olympics opening to unfold on a river.

Speaking to Deadline prior to the ceremony, Herrero said the invite from artistic director Thomas Jolly to join the co-writing team came out of the blue.

Zombi Child director Bertrand Bonello on what happened after Jacques Tourneur's I Walked With A Zombie: "And then the Zombi becomes something very different. Like in the trilogy by George Romero.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

In the second half of my conversation with Bertrand Bonello on Zombi Child, shot by Yves Cape (Leos Carax’s Holy Motors) featuring Mackenson Bijou, Louise Labèque, Wislanda Louimat, Katiana Wilfort, Adelé David, Ninon François, Mathilde Riu, and Patrick Boucheron, the director notes the change in the genre from Victor Halperin’s White Zombie to George A Romero’s trilogy in response to my comment about Jacques Tourneur's I Walked With A Zombie.

Bertrand Bonello on Zombi Child: “The construction is very precise.”

The director/screenwriter of Nocturama; Saint Laurent; House Of Tolerance (with Adèle Haenel and Jasmine Trinca); Ingrid Caven: Music And Voice; and Tiresia has included Brian De Palma’s Carrie; Richard Donner’s [film id=19857]The.

Zombi Child director Bertrand Bonello on Olivier Meyrou's Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé documentary Celebration: "It's beautiful. A beautiful film." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

The last time I spoke with Bertrand Bonello, it was on Nocturama at the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema luncheon in 2017, hosted by uniFrance at Robert De Niro's Locanda Verde in Tribeca. The event was also attended by Django director Étienne Comar and Reda Kateb (who portrays Django Reinhardt), Film at Lincoln Center's Director of Programming Dennis Lim, along with numerous members of the French film delegation.

This time around, Bertrand and I met at the Hudson Hotel the morning before the New York Film Festival Us Premiere at Alice Tully Hall of his latest film, Zombi Child, with Mackenson Bijou, Louise Labèque, Wislanda Louimat, Katiana Wilfort, Adelé David, Ninon François, Mathilde Riu, and Patrick Boucheron. This is not Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die.

Photo by Dan Rodriguez

Bertrand Bonello returns to the New York Film Festival with Zombi Child, which follows Mélissa (Wislanda Louimat), granddaughter to Haiti’s most famous zombi, Clairvius Narcisse, and an immigrant to France whose parents died in the 2010 earthquake.

Mélissa’s friend Fanny (Louise Labeque) wants her to join a secret group of girls at the prestigious Légion d’honneur boarding school, but the cliquish group of privileged white girls (who exude a coven vibe) conflict with Mélissa’s cool, unconcerned appeal. Mélissa’s confidence comes from a conditioned sense of her grandfather’s oppression and enslavement by zombification. As Fanny is drawn deeper into the roots of Mélissa’s voodoo heritage, all hell breaks loose when she uses it for manipulative ends.

We sat down with Bonello at the 57th New York Film Festival to discuss meeting real-life zombies, the great lengths he went to respect the...