Luc Besson had to talk his producers into casting Rihanna in Valerian

Close your eyes, picture an ‘indie’ film. What comes to mind? Probably something low budget, character-based, do it yourself, filmed on an iPhone like 2015’s Tangerine. Definitely not a $200 million plus science fiction space opera based on a comic book that has more in common with Avatar (2009) than any film since, right?
But that’s exactly what Luc Besson’s has made with Valerian: City of a Thousand Planets. And why not? When you’ve got 50 credits to your name, including the massive hits The Fifth Element (1997), Lucy (2014), Taken (2008) and The Transporter (2002), who needs the studio system to make the film you’d been dreaming of for years?
If you’ve heard the words ‘Valerian’ and ‘Besson’ together before, it was probably back when Besson hired Jean-Claude Mézières, the artist for the legendary French comic book series Valérian and Laureline, to work on the Fifth Element, itself greatly inspired by the comic. Besson had loved the comic since he was a young boy, but when Mézières asked him to make it, he said it couldn’t be done.
But the idea stayed in his head. After a while, he finally wrote a script. And he was happy with it. But then James Cameron invited him to the set of Avatar.
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