When Cara [Delevingne] and Dane [DeHaan] arrived, I told their agent, "They need to know all this." I gave them the 600 pages. I said, "You have to learn everything. You're a cop. You need to know the names." I don't want him, when he meets an alien to go, "Whoa" like this. I want him to know if this guy is peaceful.

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

I saw Cara Delevingne like five, six times. And I was never talking about the film [Valerian]. And then at the end, I say okay, let's do some test. She says yeah, yeah, good. So I took her in the room, and I test her for like six hours non-stop. Exercise, exercise, exercise for six hours. It was actually funny. And then I knew at the end of the six hours.

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.

You know, it's not my film [Valerian], it's really their film. It's very strange. And maybe because it's more when you comes to the Marvel films it's way much more organized and plan, you know, they planned. Okay, we have Thor here, we have this and then we do The Avengers, and then we group. You know, it's much more organized. So maybe there is a little less freedom at the end for the creative people. Where I did the entire opposite. I let them help me, you know. So that's also why maybe they were so involved.

I wanted to do something that was entertaining - but with a catch.

I won't be able to do a film just for bad reasons, for money or for - I just can't. If I have one more where I feel I can bring you something, I will do it.