A first glimpse at Netflix's highly-anticipated Tour de France documentary was shown on Tuesday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, featuring television and on-bike video footage, as well as shots from other races and film from inside the team bus.
The teaser trailer - not the official trailer - was shown on Tuesday evening in Barcelona, and later published on Twitter by the Escape Collective. The event can be watched in full on the Mobile World Congress' website, and the trailer can be watched in the embedded tweet below.
It begins with Groupama-FDJ's manager Marc Madiot telling his riders: “You are soldiers, you are warriors. When you pull on a jersey, you become another person.” It goes on to show the eight teams which agreed to be filmed for the series, AG2R Citroën, Alpecin-Fenix, Bora-Hansgrohe, EF Education-EasyPost, Groupama-FDJ, Ineos Grenadiers, Jumbo-Visma and Quick-Step Alpha Vinyl.
The series is expected to be launched in June, ahead of this year's Tour, consisting of eight 45-minute episodes. It is a joint venture between Quad and Box to Box Films. The latter is the producer of the highly-rated Netflix series Drive to Survive, which tells the inside stories of selected Formula One teams throughout the racing season.
Drive to Survive has been a huge hit for Netflix and has helped bring new fans into Formula One, something the teams and the Tour's organisers, ASO, will hope to do with their documentary series.
A listing on Netflix last week suggested the cycling series would be called Tour de France: Unchained, but Tuesday's trailer ends with Tour de France: Au cœur du peloton, basically Inside the Peloton.
Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters presented the two-minute Tour de France series video after giving a keynote speech at the MWC. "The road ahead is a steep climb," Peters punned before the debut of the trailer.
A French narrator says: "The Tour de France is very simple: It’s a bike race, every day, over 21 stages. It’s an enormous circus that travels around the country. It’s the world’s toughest race.”
According to reports, Netflix covered the production costs of €8 million to make the series, paying a total of €1 million to the different parties involved, with teams ending up with about €62,000 each.
Film makers were embedded within the eight squads that participated throughout the season. Interestingly, the trailer included non-Tour de France shots, such as a crash at Strade Bianche, and old footage, like Philippe Gilbert crashing while he was at Quick-Step.
One notable absentee from the Netflix show is Tadej Pogačar, with his UAE Team Emirates squad not taking part, although Tour winner Jonas Vingegaard's Jumbo-Visma team is well represented throughout.
The Netflix Tour de France doc is just one of a few cycling TV productions to be in the works, with Netflix also working on a film about Mark Cavendish, and series involving Jumbo-Visma and Soudal Quick-Step both appearing on Amazon Prime soon.
