When Christopher Nolan‘s “Dunkirk” opens next month, it’s going to have some competition from another movie offering plenty of big screen spectacle: “Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets.” Luc Besson‘s big, sci-fi flick is the most expensive to have ever been made in France, with a a final price tag of €197.47 million (about $210 million U.S.). That’s not cheap, and while you might think the film needs to be a monster hit for backers EuropaCorp (which Besson heads up), the director explains they’re pretty well covered.
In an interview with Screen Daily, Besson reveals that ‘Valerian’ has pretty much already paid for itself.
“Like every film company, we will only greenlight a project if at least 80% of its budget is covered. With ‘Valerian,’ we’ve covered 96% of the budget with pre-sales,” he said. “….The risk to EuropaCorp is 4% of the budget so there’s no actual financial risk. The risk for the company is more one of notoriety. If the film is a big flop, we’ll lose credibility for making these sorts of films. The risk is not financial, but rather human.”
In a summer where we’ve seen established brands underperform at the box office, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of business ‘Valerian’ does. But no matter how it’s received, it looks like EuropaCorp covered their bases for the most part, and have established a modest bar to clear in terms of calling the picture a success.
“Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets” opens on July 21st.