Luc Besson to direct ABC’s ‘The French Detective’

“Léon: The Professional” director Luc Besson is set to direct a pilot episode of a series titled “The French Detective” for ABC. The network has brought out the big guns for this series as the 2011 Best Actor Academy Award winner Jean Dujardin, from “The Artist,” is already on board as the lead. The series, based on James Patterson’s “Luc Moncrief” series of mini-novels, is about a French detective who joins the New York Police Department only to find that everyone around him starts dying. While NYPD crime thriller sounds like an unlikely choice for an actor like Dujardin, the director helming behind the camera is unprecedented. Dujardin himself has done enough action thrillers in his native industry to pull it off. Besson may likewise be pegged on these shores for the world's foremost purveyor of particularly artsy sci-fi films, however he is also the creator of cult classic action films like “La Femme Nikita” and “Leon: The Professional”. Both the director and actor have the crowd pleasing genre-work in their blood. ABC has been known to produce easy-to-the-eyes popular action dramas like “Castle,” “Quantico” and “How to get away with Murder.” Could “The French Detective” prove to be their ticket into the big race? With Besson and Dujardin’s French-tastic duo, it might just be.