Luc Besson: Last News

EXCLUSIVE: Sung Kang, best known for his role as the popular ‘Han Lue’ in Universal’s billion-dollar Fast & Furious franchise, has signed with Buchwald for representation.

EXCLUSIVE: Mena Suvari (American Beauty), Nick Stahl (Let the Right One In) and India Marie Cross (Wicked City) will star alongside Caleb Landry Jones in Down the Arm of God, an indie drama co-written by Jones and Peter Brunner, which is being introduced at EFM by Kinology.

EXCLUSIVE: UTA has signed actor Caleb Landry Jones for representation in all areas.

Luc Besson‘s secret project that he shot during the COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 — has re-emerged with guns blazing (literally). Variety can exclusively reveal a trailer and posters for the feature that appear to take the French director back to the slick and stylized filmmaking that would first make his name.

EXCLUSIVE: Quiver Distribution has taken North American distribution rights to the romantic end-of-days thriller When I’m Ready, starring Andrew Ortenberg, June Schreiner, Thalia Besson, Lauren Cohan, and Dermot Mulroney.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent After slowly returning to production in the wake of a restructuring, EuropaCorp, the company founded by “The Professional” director Luc Besson, is now fully back in action with several French and international films in the pipeline. These include the Snoop Dogg sci-fi movie “The Last Man,” and “Disorder,” a thriller starring Dylan Sprayberry (Teen Wolf”) and Thalia Besson who plays Geneviève in “Emily in Paris” season 4.

Snoop Dogg is set to feature in a new sci-fi film by Luc Besson called The Last Man.Rumours that the rapper would be making his way back to the big screen come after the ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ rapper hinted that he was working on a project “in the vein” of Planet of the Apes last month.While details at the time remained vague, he did go on to say that the project would use “dogs instead of apes”.Now, Variety has shared a report of a new project by Besson called The Last Man, which has a similar description and is set to begin filming in the new year.According to the outlet, Besson will pen the screenplay and is expected to keep it in a similar realm to his 1997 cult classic The Fifth Element, in the sense that they both mix sci-fi and comedy.“I’ve been a big fan of Snoop Dogg’s music ever since ‘Who Am I,’” said Besson (as per Consequence). “We first met 20 years ago, and we’ve always wanted to work together again.

Ellise Shafer Timothy West, the English star of stage and screen known for memorable turns in U.K. soaps “Coronation Street” and “EastEnders,” died on Tuesday. He was 90.

Dennis Harvey Film Critic In 1982, Prince urged everyone to “Party like it’s 1999.” Aiming to party somewhere roughly in the middle of that timespan is “Weekend in Taipei,” a throwback in the sense that it recalls the unpretentious — if also unmemorable — pleasures of many boilerplate action movies released in the peak VCR era. Luc Besson is both a co-writer and producer on this French-Taiwanese enterprise, which provides George Huang his first directorial feature in some time, 30 years after his very different debut, “Swimming With Sharks.” With “Fast & Furious” alumni Luke Evans and Sung Kang as the male leads, this tale of a DEA agent venturing East to battle a crime syndicate raises expectations of flashy chase and fight scenes.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Baz Luhrmann has set his new project, “Jehanne d’Arc” at Warner Bros. Warners has confirmed that the filmmaker will next take on the epic tale of France’s national heroine and saint Joan of Arc.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Taiwan-born actor Shu Qi has completed production of her feature film directing debut, “Girl.” While plot and cast details of the new film remain under wraps, “Girl” is Shu Qi’s original story that she wrote and directed after a prolonged development period. Shu Qi does not appear in the film. The picture is financed by Taiwan’s CMC Entertainment, Wow momentum, J.Q.

Ewan McGregor has spoken about how Woody Allen once told him how he was “boring everyone to death” on the set of 2007 crime thriller Cassandra’s Dream.The film, which saw the Trainspotting star team up with Colin Farrell, saw the director give McGregor some cutting feedback on set.“Once, he walked over to me and went, ‘I can hear every seat in the cinema flapping up,’ like I was boring everyone to death and everyone’s leaving,” recalled McGregor in a new interview with Variety.“I was like, ‘Oh, thanks, Woody.’ So me and Colin Farrell, as soon as we saw each other, we’d start running lines because there were huge long scenes, and he doesn’t like to do or doesn’t often do coverage – which is wonderful to do as an actor because it’s a bit like being on stage, but you have to be up to speed.”Despite the criticism, Allen’s film received mixed reviews clocking up an approval rating of only 46 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.Meanwhile, McGregor is set to be honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame later today (September 12). “If anyone gives you an award for anything, you’re pretty chuffed about it,” McGregor said.“You’re always just pleased to be thought of.

Alex Ritman If anyone had a particularly surreal Venice in 2023, it was Caleb Landry Jones. Not only was the actor on the Lido for barely 24 hours — for the world premiere of Luc Besson’s “DogMan” in which he played a cross-dressing vigilante-thief with a pack of canines at his command — but the 34-year-old had effectively been yanked from a muddy film set on the top of a mountain in Scotland early one morning, flown to Italy, put in a shirt, ferried from press conference to red carpet, flown back to Scotland the next day and driven to the top of a mountain to shoot a crucial scene.

Twin brothers Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma left their village in southwest France for Paris just over a decade ago to study film at the Luc Besson-spearheaded L’École de la Cité.

Jack Dunn Online physical media retailer Waxwork Records is releasing the original soundtrack to “Monkey Man.” Composed by Jed Kurzel, the music from Dev Patel‘s directorial debut will be available Aug. 16 in a double-LP set featuring red, black and metallic gold a-side and b-side colored vinyl.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic I’ve never seen a line for the men’s room at the American Cinématheque as long as the one that confronted me at intermission of the marathon screening of Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon” this weekend. (Keep in mind, by that point, the crowd had been holding its collective bladder for three and a half hours, with the second half still to come.) Meanwhile, there were so few women in attendance that the ladies’ room had practically no wait at all — a phenomenon that said everything about the crowd that had turned out for a big-screen look at the 373-minute director’s cut of Snyder’s two-part space opera.

EXCLUSIVE: Caleb Landry Jones extends a gnarly bejewelled hand as he arrives on the set of Luc Besson’s gothic drama Dracula: A Love Tale.  

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Reminiscent of the outsized Chinese box office success once enjoyed by a certain genre of Hollywood movie – think “Expendables 3,” Pacific Rim” and “Transformers: Age of Extinction” – some Japanese anime films are now earning more in China than they are in their native Japan. Last year, “Suzume” (pictured above) earned $117 million in China, coming in ahead of the film’s $104 million total in Japan.

EXCLUSIVE: Activist Artists Management has signed Jojo T. Gibbs, the actress, writer, producer and stand-up comedian best known for her starring role in Lena Waithe’s semi-autobiographical BET series Twenties, for representation. Bernie Cahill and Grant Pennel will run point for the client.

Fundamental Films chairman Mark Gao and his CEO Ivy Hua are in Cannes to reconnect with the international industry as part of the Shanghai-based company’s return to international acquisitions and production. 

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer It’s something out of a movie, the way a young Donna Langley first discovered the magic of film. The chairman of NBCU studio group and chief content officer was in her late teens, broadening her horizons in Paris away from her upbringing on the tiny Isle of Wight off the English Channel. It was there she saw films like Jean-Jacques Beineix’s “Diva,” Luc Besson’s “Le Grand Bleu” and retrospectives on the works of auteurs like Jean-Luc Godard.