Luc Besson, the visionary director behind The Fifth Element and the Scarlett Johansson-led sleeper hit Lucy, is poised for a return to Hollywood’s big leagues later this year with the release of Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets, a wildly ambitious space opera (and possible franchise-starter?) headed up by Dane DeHaan and Suicide Squad‘s Cara Delevingne.
On paper, it’s an exercise in risk-taking for the esteemed French filmmaker, particularly when you consider the similarities between Valerian and Jupiter Ascending – for all of its grandeur and ostentatious scope, the Wachowskis’ box office bomb still wound up costing Warner Bros. a pretty penny. But following the dazzling first trailer, there’s an air of cautious optimism looming large over Luc Besson’s space oddity.
It’s pegged to arrive on July 21st – a primetime summer date if ever there was one – and one glance at the calendar will tell you that Valerian is slated to open against Christopher Nolan’s WWII epic, Dunkirk. But the sweeping sci-fi vistas of Valerian are literally worlds away from the blood-soaked beaches of a war-torn Europe, and down below, you’ll be able to get a new look at the characters populating Besson’s City of a Thousand Planets.
Front and center are DeHann and Delevingne, who are set to lead the charge as Valerian and Laureline, respectively. Those two spacefaring heroes initially sprung from the mind of comic book writer Pierre Christin, and their sole mission is to safeguard “a utopian 28th century Earth and its neighboring planets from bad guys, with the pair’s adventures rooted in space opera and time travel themes.” If moving pictures are more your thing, there’s also a beautiful new TV spot to pour over today, and you’ll be able to get a taste of Luc Besson’s sci-fi epic in motion up above.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets will be with us on July 21st.
