Weinstein: "Intouchables" an "Avengers"-like blockbuster

(CBS News) Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein brought a French movie onto the worldwide stage last year. The black-and-white film, "The Artist," won five Oscars, including Best Picture.

Weinstein: "Artist" was million-to-one shot

Now the producer is trying to do it again with another French film called "The Intouchables."

Weinstein said the movie, already a hit abroad, is almost on the blockbuster level of the superhero movie "The Avengers."

In Weinstein's words, "The Intouchables" tells the uplifting true story of "a black kid from the streets of Paris who goes to work for French aristocrat daredevil who was in love with his wife, crashed his race car, and is living, but not living well as a paraplegic. (The employee) brings his boss no pity. The paraplegic learns how to love, laugh again."

Since its release, the movie has garnered some criticism over the racial overtones concerning the character that comes to work for the paraplegic, played by rising star Omar Sy.

"Criticism has come in the U.S. because they see Omar and think he's like out of an Eddie Murphy movie in the U.S.," Weinstein said. " ... But in this country - and they're so wrong - because they don't understand French immigration at all."

He continued, "...On the French side of it, the right wing fascists...criticize this movie as an analogy of France, they're saying, 'We don't need people from the streets to help us in France. We don't need black people.'"

For more with Weinstein on "The Intouchables" - which has already won the French equivalent of an Oscar - politics, and more, watch the video in the player above.