“ SOME OF THE DESIGNS GOT
REALLY INSANE,”
says Luc Besson. “A few times I wanted to call the police and say, ‘You
should lock this guy up. He’s crazy!’” The French auteur is casting his mind
back to the extraordinary pre-production period for his new movie, mad
sci-fi epic Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets, a process which
took five years, involved 1,000 Skype sessions, and yes, nearly saw a few of
Besson’s underlings wheeled off in straitjackets. “We had a back-up team in
place,” he continues, “because I figured after two years the first bunch
would be cooked.”
The movie, an adventure involving space-cops Valerian (Dane DeHaan)
and Laureline (Cara Delevingne), is based on the world created by writer
Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières over 29 graphic novel
albums, released between 1967 and 2010. But while some of its elements arepulled directly from the books, Besson’s aim was to make its setting — the
Alpha space station in the year 2750 — the vastest, richest environment
ever seen in a sci-fi movie. “We sent letters to design schools all around the
world, saying, ‘We’re going to make a big sci-fi film. If you’re interested,
send one drawing of an alien, one drawing of a spaceship and one drawing
of a world,’” he says. “We received nearly 4,000 replies and picked the best
10 people. They didn’t know anything about the story, and weren’t allowed
to communicate with each other — the only person they could see was me
on a webcam, once a week. It was so pure. No limitations.”
Slowly, Alpha came together. A weighty tome, which Besson refers to
as his “bible”, outlines the entire 700-year history of the space station. “We
have 10 pages for each kind of alien,” he thrills. “What they eat, how they
reproduce, everything. You even have their address. Wanna check out what’s
going on in the constellation QN34? Look it up!”
While we can’t publish the entirety of that bible — it remains locked in
a Parisian vault, plus you really don’t want to know how the Doghan
Daguis reproduce — Besson is happy to spill some of the secrets of his
out-there creations...