Sy, who plays Lupin in the new series, shared as much in a recent interview (opens in new tab) with Variety. Arsène Lupin is a French icon.Ĭlearly, Lupin means quite a bit to many people around the world. The 2021 Netflix series marks the first time a French show has held the #1 spot on the streamer's top 10 list in the U.S. Other shows have been produced in the Philippines and Japan. Lupin is also no stranger to TV, having appeared in his first hourlong series in France in the early 1970s. An earlier American take on Leblanc's character, 1932's Arsène Lupin, featured John Barrymore (grandfather of Drew) as the gentleman thief. The most recent was 1944's Enter Arsène Lupin, starring Charles Korvin in the lead role. Though the first-ever Lupin film was made in the U.S., further stateside adaptations have been scarce. Twenty-two more Lupin films followed, with adaptations coming from France, Japan, Germany, Mexico, and the U.K. The first film adaptation of Lupin's mischievous ways arrived shockingly quickly after the character was introduced: in the 1908 black and white silent film The Gentleman Burglar. It makes sense, then, that a heist expert like Lupin would have been brought to life onscreen many times in his nearly 116 years of existence.

That collection includes stories about a necklace that once belonged to Marie Antoinette, Lupin's time in and shockingly easy escape from prison, and a 'mysterious traveler' who accosts Lupin on a train-sound familiar? Lupin isn't the first onscreen adaptation of Leblanc's stories.Īs evidenced by the approximately one million Bond movies that have been made in the last 60 years, viewers have a thing for heist movies. Though Netflix's Lupin draws inspiration from the legendary character's antics across Leblanc's entire catalogue, several major plot points are borrowed directly from Leblanc's first compilation of short stories, 1907's Arsène Lupin, Gentleman Burglar-which is also the book that Diop's father gives him as a child, and which he passes on to his own son.

The arrest of arsène lupin 1905