Following the success of last year’s actioner Lucy, French director Luc Besson is remaining in the science fiction wheelhouse with his next project, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
Announced today via the filmmaker’s own and new-fangled Twitter account, Besson also confirmed that the genre piece has snapped up two of the industry’s most-promising young talents in The Amazing Spider-Man‘s Dane DeHaan and model-cum-actress Cara Delevingne, who can be seen rubbing shoulders with the other members of David Ayer’s Suicide Squad.
Starring @danedehaan & @Caradelevingne. Shooting in December. In theaters 2017. pic.twitter.com/R3STb1aPsf
— Luc Besson (@lucbesson) May 12, 2015
It’s understood that Besson will write and direct the feature film, which is to be based on Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières’ eyponymous graphic novel series. Stepping into the roles of Valerian and Laureline, respectively, De Haan and Delevingne will be a key part in the director’s grand space opera as they explore “Syrte, capital planet of a system of 1,000 worlds. Their mission is to discover whether the Syrtians could present a danger to Earth” circa 2700.
Boasting themes of idylic, utopian cities and time travel, Luc Besson’s latest is within the same galactic neighbourhood as The Fifth Element, which bagged the filmmaker multiple awards back in 1997. Could Valerian emulate its success when it lands in theaters?
Speaking of which, according to Besson’s Tweets, Valerian is due to arrive two decades after its spiritual fore-bearer, as the director has slated the film for a release in 2017, with plans to get the cameras rolling later this year.
Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières’ literary series has enjoyed longstanding success since its debut back in ’68 – the most recent iteration was published in 2010 – and Luc Besson will no doubt hope the IP garners similar praise on the big screen when Valerian comes to shape in 2017.