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.

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

I think we have the wrong notion of commercial and intellectual or artistic film. Because all films are commercial.

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

After six, seven films, I started to get a little tired. Shooting takes a lot out of you.

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.

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].