With the exception of last summer’s surprise blockbuster Lucy, Luc Besson hasn’t had a true classic film since The Fifth Element back in 1997. But now arriving nearly two decades later, Besson is returning to those sci-fi roots.
Today the French director joined Twitter, and for his first ever posting announced some big news: his new film would be the sci-fi Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Deadline confirmed the news, along with the update that Dane DeHaan (The Amazing Spiderman, Chronicle, The Place Beyond the Pines) and Cara Delevingne (Paper Towns) would star. DeHaan will play the title character Valerian.
Besson additionally said on Twitter that the film would begin shooting in December and would be expected for a 2017 release. See all his tweets and a new logo he released for the film below:
My first tweet ever! Let’s share a real news! My next film is a big sci-fi: #Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
— Luc Besson (@lucbesson) May 12, 2015
Starring @danedehaan & @Caradelevingne. Shooting in December. In theaters 2017. pic.twitter.com/R3STb1aPsf
— Luc Besson (@lucbesson) May 12, 2015
First logo #Valerian pic.twitter.com/d68FIJhOuX
— Luc Besson (@lucbesson) May 12, 2015
Valerian is based on a French graphic novel series Valérian and Laureline, first published in 1967 and completed in 2010. Pierre Christin and artist Jean-Claude Mézières created the series in which Valerian and Laureline are two “spatio-temporal agents” in the 28th Century. With the ability to travel through time and space, they’re required to search through time for their home Galaxity, lost to time and space due to a “temporal paradox”.
The story has apparently inspired films including Besson’s Fifth Element, and Besson first announced he was working on this project back in July 2012. Besson has also written the screenplay for the currently filming The Lake, starring J.K. Simmons.