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

I'm always attracted by people who are lost in their time. I think it helps us.

I did The Fifth Element and [Jean-Claude] Mezieres, the artist of Valerian; he was working on Fifth Element. And he's actually the one who say, why don't you do Valerian? And I said because we can't make it. And you really have to wait for Avatar and to suddenly think oh okay, maybe we can think of it. But before Avatar, just forget it.

I said if I made 10 films in my life, I would be very lucky. That's how I meant it. My fear after my first one was whether they would let me make another one, so I had this goal in my head.

We were so ready [with Valerian] that we were early, which is unheard of in the history of the sci-fi film.

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.