The Hunchback, Soul of Paris trailer: Netflix takes Quasimodo into a cholera-hit Paris

Forget the bells and the songs. Netflix has released the official trailer for The Hunchback, Soul of Paris, a French retelling of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame that heads somewhere far bleaker than Disney’s 1996 musical.

The film is set in Paris in 1830, with cholera spreading through the city and revolution brewing. Its hunchback is a stonemason thought to be a monster who may hold the cure, which puts the police and a doctor on his trail as he tries to protect a dancer he loves, according to Netflix’s synopsis as reported by ComingSoon and What’s on Netflix.

Vincent Cassel plays the title role. Jean-François Richet, director of Mesrine and Plane, directs, and the cast includes Karim Leklou, Daphné Patakia and Benjamin Voisin. The film arrives on Netflix on 27 November.

Our take on the trailer: 3.5/5

What works. The scale. The trailer moves from packed streets to candlelit rooms to the cathedral itself, and its Paris looks grim and lived-in. Turning Hugo’s story into a chase, with a man hunted because his body might save the city, is a genuinely new angle on very familiar material.

What doesn’t. The trailer leans hard on narration and title cards to sell its premise. And the cure plot, however intriguing, could easily tip into a gimmick if the film doesn’t earn it.

This rating is Bloom Entertainment’s opinion of the trailer only. The film has not been released.