A brand new trailer went live over the weekend for director Luc Besson’s latest, Anna. The new female-fronted assassin thriller has debut actress Sasha Luss in the title role, and I’m actually fascinated as to this one will turn out when it hits theaters seeing as the campaign feels abnormally quiet to me apart from the usual requisite TV spots and social media blurbs.
It’d be nice to be able to talk about movies like French director Luc Besson’s latest, Anna, without having bring things up like the past year in which he’s faced multiple allegations of sexual assult by women in addition to a lawsuit from at least one victim. But…we don’t live in a world that ideal, and Summit is contractually obligated to distribute the new assassin thriller as it intended after acquiring it in October 2017.
It’s 20 years since producer Luc Besson struck gold with Gérard Pirès’s winning hit, Taxi, and with three more in the French-produced franchise next to an American reboot and a TV series. More than ten years have lapsed thereafter with helmer Gérard Krawczyk and franchise star Samy Naceri shepherding the action comedy saga, thus leaving it to writer and director Franck Gastambide to take the mantle on both sides of the lens for a fifth new outing.
Gastambide takes his fourth turn behind the lens here and also stars next to Malik Bentalha for the story of a Marseille police transfer who commandeers a taxi and its hapless driver to stop a gang of Italian robbers with powerful Ferraris. Production was made official in late 2016 with a January release in France this year until it was pushed back for a date now sitting on April 11 from EuropaCorp. Gastambide and Bentalha can now be seen revving up the driver’s seat in the first official Taxi 5 teaser now online below!
Plot details have yet to be made known but considering Besson’s cult-acclaim and knack for otherwise buzzworthy spectacle, Anna sounds like its in good hands. All it needs now is a solid script, acting and story, and cohesive action scenes that won’t make moviegoers regret paying $20 bucks for a ticket.
A lifetime of sci-fi and literary appreciation, nearly four decades of filmic output, two (maybe) scripts, well over $180 million dollars and almost 15 times the visual shots used in his 1997 sci-fi, The Fifth Element, director Luc Besson now has something meaty to present the summer moviegoing crowd in Valerian: The City Of A Thousand Planets. His latest interview with Deadline gives a greater scope at the strain he now faces in comparison to his previous work and especially in the wake of technological advancements in filmmaking, notably sampled in James Cameron’s 2009 hit, Avatar, and so it’s worth reading in my opinion.
I remember first catching the trailer for Luc Besson’s upcoming sci-fi, Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets and likening it to the director’s equally splendid intergalactic futuristic sci-fi bid, The Fifth Element. Granted the film’s over-the-top bravado and almost anime-style delivery, the formula itself applied a groundbreaking tale that garnered the film’s succession at the box office nearly 20 years ago.
Rooted in the classic graphic novel series, Valerian and Laureline- visionary writer/director Luc Besson advances this iconic source material into a contemporary, unique and epic science fiction saga.Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are special operatives for the government of the human territories charged with maintaining order throughout the universe.
We’re a little over a year from the July 21, 2017 date set for the release of director Luc Besson’s newest foray into sci-fi, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. That still leaves plenty of time to obsess with what Besson is up to for the forthcoming adaptation of duo Jean-Claude Mezieres and Pierre Christin’s 1967 French comic and this week, Besson is speeding things up via Twitter with a first-look at actor Dane DeHaan and actress Cara Delevingne in costume. Take a look below!
Also starring are Rihanna, Clive Owen, Ethan Hawke, Kris Wu and Herbie Hancock in the $180 million dollar production currently in the hands of EuropaCorp.
One other takeaway from EuropaCorp’s CineEurope2015 presentation this week is one that definitely may have been longawaited for moviegoers fond of actress Zoe Saldana. By 2011 she had already claimed the female lead in J.J. Abrams’s rebooted Star Trek film in 2009 with a career big enough to give her a solo spotlight in future titles, namely director Olivier Megaton’s assassin thriller, Colombiana.
Tackling the hitwoman genre, the film was written by Besson with co-scribe Robert Mark Kamen with a story that puts Saldana at the center of a professional killer’s tale of love, mystery, espionage and danger as her career brings her closer to avenging the death of her parents at the hands of a Bogota crime boss. The did commercially well though not enough to be a notable success, and it ultimately drew ire of critics aplenty while taking nothing away (if not very little) from Saldana’s status as a rising star in her own right. She’s since gone on to stake her claim in Star Trek: Into Darkness and its upcoming third installment next year, in addition to Marvel’s multiphase superhero franchise with James Gunn’s Guardians Of The Galaxy and its upcoming sequel and James Cameron’s Avatar saga until 2019, among others.
Clearly, it’s easy to see why EuropaCorp is eager to see to help make Colombiana 2 work as per its latest announcement at the expo, and hopefully the right director will aid these efforts in doing so.
Stay tuned for more info!
H/T: Indiewire
Jesus H. Mother of all cookies and cream!
Sources over at THR have reported that EuropaCorp is lending a nod to a Lucy sequel as per the studio’s English title slate presentation a CineEurope 2015. The first film starred Marvel leading lady Scarlett Johansson in a role that sees her racing against time when a drug she is forced to smuggle for a Korean crimeboss leaks through her bloodstream, granting her unique abilities.
It’s a mind-bending story fantastically built around the question behind what one could achieve if they reached 100% usage of the human brain, and its a concept director Luc Besson was smart to play with having earned close to $460 million dollars globally, with Universal earning a chunk of that for its U.S. run. Besson himself wasn’t too sure about a sequel considering the ending but told folks at WonderCon last year that he would consider it if the film was huge enough.
I guess this means he considered it. Stay tuned for more info!
Cockneys V Zombies helmer Matthias Hoene‘s latest China/French co-production, Warrior’s Gate is currently underway with filming as of last Monday. The production was announced a few years ago as part of a newly announced production partnership between Luc Besson and Mark Gao representing EuropaCorp and Fundemental Films, respectively and now that cameras are rolling with three names already cast, more have been added to the roster.
Variety reports that Resident Evil franchise and Eragon co-star, actress Sienna Guillory and The Man With The Iron Fists and recently-cast Kickboxer remake co-star Dave Bautista will join lead actor Uriah Shelton in the film which centers on a young boy who magically travels back in time to ancient China where he learns to use his videogame skills to ultimately become a Kung Fu warrior. I’m sure there’s more to this gist of a plot as its early days with cameras rolling but this does read a lot like a cross between The Forbidden Kingdom and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and I like both titles too. I’m not yet sure how I feel about this, but this might turn out to be more original than predicted, so I’ll probably take interest anyway. We’ll see.
Actor Mark Chao and actress Ni Ni round out the current cast with filming expected to move to Canada later on. In the meantime, filmgoers can expect to catch Guillory in Ilyas Kaduji’s Abduct and Ben Wheatley’s High Rise, while Bautista makes way for Martin Owen’s horror romp, L.A. Slasher, Scott Mann’s Bus 657 and Sam Mendes’s latest 007 installment, Spectre, all later this year.
Within the last few years following Luc Besson’s co-production partnering of EuropaCorp with Shanghai-based Fundemental Films for a slate of English-language films, its package also included a fantasy martial arts film titled Warrior’s Gate. Scant info has been granted for the latter, but thankfully things are about to change as production finally begins next month in lieu of current events at this year’s Beijing International Film Festival.
THR reports that helmer Matthias Hoene is directing this, his second feature since winning acclaim with the 2012 action horror romp, Cockneys Vs Zombies. Rising star Uriah Shelton, Flowers Of War actress Ni Ni and Taiwanese-Canadian actor Mark Chao (Black And White 1 & 2) are joining the $48 million dollar French-Chinese co-production with a script by Besson and Robert Mark Karmen which centers on teenager who gets magically transported to China where he ultimately trains in kung fu in order to save a princess from danger.
Sure, it’s a plot that sounds awfully familiar for anyone who still feels like The Forbidden Kingdom and Warriors Of Virtue just came out yesterday. Hopefully there’s some redeeming value in this project as new as it is, and who would say no to another kung fu movie at that? I wouldn’t.
Check back for more info.
H/T: City On Fire
Photo: Facebook
You must be logged in to post a comment.