My concern 99% is about the storytelling, the emotion and all this. I never think about the format of anything until way far in the process and when we arrive to the fabrication of the thing then we start to say, "Okay right, what is the best thing we can do." I choose the car before to choose the color.

I would rather stop [making movies] too soon than too late.

If we wanted to make it the way I imagined I knew that we would have to wake up earlier and start very early. So we prep like crazy. And the competition you have is like Avatar, you have Star Wars, you have all the big Marvel stuff. So if you want to come in the race, you know, don't be pretentious.

If you're someone from the government and you meet people from other countries, you want to know who you're dealing with. It's the same for them [in Valerian].

I never think about franchises, to be honest. I always just do the film.

I have like 10 actors and 100 aliens in the film [Valerian]. And they come from the four corners of the universe. Some of them are liquid. Some of them are just [so visually] crazy.

I don't want to show kids that I am smoking.