Valerian has been an important part of almost all of writer/director Luc Besson’s life.
Because of this, it’s curious that it’s taken this long for the filmmaker to actually make a movie based on the material — but this is because he believed that it truly would have been an impossible task for the longest time.
It wasn’t until he saw James Cameron’s Avatar in 2009 that he changed his mind and recognized that technology had gotten to where it needed to be to tell the story properly.
Not only has he been a fan of the French Valerian and Laureline comics since he was 10 years old (describing Laureline as his first love), he has even closely collaborated with its creators in the past, working alongside artist Jean-Claude Mézières on 1997’s The Fifth Element.