France's largest and oldest film studio, Pathé, has established a new production and finance company called Emotion Pictures in partnership with Vendôme Pictures, the producer of CODA, alongside French billionaire Rodolphe Saadé's holding company, Merit France. Announced on Tuesday, this new studio will focus on the development, acquisition, full financing, and production of English-language feature films aimed at commercial success and broad audiences.

Emotion Pictures will open offices in Paris and Los Angeles and will produce films that will be theatrically distributed in France, Switzerland, and the Benelux countries by Pathé. This move signals a global expansion led by heavyweights in the French film industry, Philippe Rousselet of Vendôme and Jérôme Seydoux of Pathé. The two companies previously collaborated on CODA, which is adapted from the 2014 French-Belgian film La Famille Bélier and won three Oscars.

Rousselet stated that Emotion Pictures aims to be a "home for filmmakers to tell original, commercial, and universally resonant stories." Pathé Chairman Ardavan Safaee added, "Emotion Pictures will support original character-driven films made for the big screen. Ambitious, quality, and emotional films on a global scale. Films that will tug at people's hearts."

Merit France, which will finance the project, is the family holding company of French-Lebanese logistics billionaire Rodolphe Saadé. Last year, Saadé acquired a 20% stake in Pathé. At that time, Pathé indicated that the investment would aim to increase the production of internationally oriented films and series and modernize the cinema network in Europe.

As France's largest and oldest film studio, Pathé has produced Oscar-winning English-language films such as Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, Phyllida Lloyd's The Iron Lady, Stephen Frears' The Queen, and Ava DuVernay's Selma, as well as the classic Chicken Run. Vendôme Pictures is currently in post-production on Andrew Niccol's Lords of War, featuring Nicolas Cage and Bill Skarsgård, and is developing the war thriller The Man With The Miraculous Hands, starring Woody Harrelson, directed by Oren Moverman.