Léon: The Professional is a 1994 English-language French action-thriller film written and directed by Luc Besson. It stars Jean Reno and Gary Oldman, and features the film debut of Natalie Portman. The plot centers on Léon (Reno), a professional hitman who reluctantly takes in twelve-year-old Mathilda Lando (Portman) after her family is murdered by corrupt Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent Norman Stansfield (Oldman). Léon and Mathilda form an unusual relationship as she becomes his protégée and learns the hitman's trade. The film was released in France by Gaumont through Gaumont Buena Vista International on 14 September 1994 and received mostly positive reviews from critics.
Luc Paul Maurice Besson is a French filmmaker. He directed or produced the films Subway (1985), The Big Blue (1988), and La Femme Nikita (1990). Associated with the Cinéma du look film movement, he has been nominated for a César Award for Best Director and Best Picture for his films Léon: The Professional (1994) and The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999). He won Best Director and Best French Director for his sci-fi action film The Fifth Element (1997). He wrote and directed the sci-fi action film Lucy (2014) and the space opera film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017).
Éric Serra is a French composer. He is a frequent collaborator of film director Luc Besson.
Taxi 2 is a 2000 French action comedy film directed by Gérard Krawczyk and released in March 2000. Starring Samy Naceri, Frédéric Diefenthal and Marion Cotillard. It is the second installment in the Taxi film series. It is a sequel to Taxi, written by Luc Besson and directed by Gérard Pirès in 1999. It was followed by Taxi 3 in January 2003.
Alfred Thomas Highmore is an English actor. He is known for his starring roles beginning as a child, in the films Finding Neverland (2004), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Arthur and the Invisibles (2006), August Rush (2007), The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008), and Astro Boy (2009). He won two consecutive Critics' Choice Movie Awards for Best Young Performer.
Arthur and the Minimoys is a 2006 English-language French live-action/animated fantasy film directed and co-written by French filmmaker Luc Besson. It is based on the first two books of the Arthur children's books series, Arthur and the Minimoys and Arthur and the Forbidden City, by Besson.
Arthur and the Invisibles is three video games based on the 2006 French film Arthur and the Minimoys by Luc Besson. It retained the original name of the movie in Europe. The game involves Arthur and his two friends, Selenia and Bétamèche, on their mission to save the Minimoys' world from destruction. The game incorporates Besson's Minimoy universe and its inhabitants.
EuropaCorp S.A. is a French motion picture company headquartered in Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, and one of a few full-service independent studios that both produce and distribute feature films. It specializes in production, distribution, home entertainment, VOD, sales, partnerships and licenses, recording, publishing and exhibition. EuropaCorp's integrated financial model generates revenues from a wide range of sources, with films from many genres and a strong presence in the international markets.
Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard is a 2009 English-language French live-action/animated fantasy film directed and co-written by Luc Besson, based on the third book of the Arthur children's books series by Besson. It is the sequel to Arthur and the Minimoys (2006), and the second installment in the Arthur film series.
The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, released as Adèle: Rise of the Mummy in Malaysia and Singapore, is a 2010 French fantasy adventure feature film written and directed by Luc Besson. It is loosely based on the comic book series The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec by Jacques Tardi and, as in the comic, follows the eponymous writer and a number of recurring side characters in a succession of far-fetched incidents in 1910s Paris and beyond, in this episode revolving around parapsychology and ultra-advanced Ancient Egyptian technology, which both pastiche and subvert adventure and speculative fiction of the period. The primarily live-action film, shot in Super 35, incorporates much use of computer animation to portray its fanciful elements and contemporary action film special and visual effects within the form of the older-style adventure films they have largely superseded.
The Arthur series refers to a series of fantasy novels for children written by Luc Besson, a film director and producer, and published from 2002 to 2005 in France, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Frédérique Bel is a French actress and model. A native of Annecy in the French Alps, she became known for her role as Dorothy Doll in the La Minute Blonde sequence from Le Grand Journal on Canal+. She has since played main and supporting roles in many productions.
A Monster in Paris is a 2011 French animated musical comedy science fantasy adventure film directed by Bibo Bergeron, and based on a story he wrote. It was produced by Luc Besson, written by Bergeron and Stéphane Kazandjian, and distributed by EuropaCorp Distribution, and features the voices of Sean Lennon, Vanessa Paradis, Adam Goldberg, Danny Huston, Madeline Zima, Matthew Géczy, Jay Harrington, Catherine O'Hara, and Bob Balaban. Many plot elements are drawn from Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera. It was released on 12 October 2011. It was also produced by Bibo Films, France 3 Cinéma, Walking The Dog, uFilm, uFund, Canal+, France Télévisions, CinéCinéma, Le Tax Shelter du Gouvernement Fédéral de Belgique and Umedia. Its music was composed by Matthieu Chedid, Sean Lennon and Patrice Renson.
No Limit is a 2012 French television action-adventure series created by filmmaker Luc Besson with Franck Philippon through Besson's EuropaCorp company. Along with Transporter: The Series, it represents one of Besson's first forays into television, although this time as a writer as well as a producer.
The Cité du Cinéma or Studios of Paris is a film studio complex originally supported and founded by the film director and producer Luc Besson, located in Saint-Denis, in the northern suburbs of Paris, in a renovated power plant, commissioned in 1933 to power the Parisian metro. The studio complex is intended to be a competitor of Cinecittà in Rome, Pinewood in London and Babelsberg in Berlin. It was inaugurated on 21 September 2012. In February 2022 Tunisian-French film producer Tarak Ben Ammar finalized a deal to purchase Studios de Paris.
Dominique Farrugia is a French actor, film director, screenwriter, producer, humorist and comedian. He is a member and founder of the group of comedians Les Nuls alongside Alain Chabat, Chantal Lauby and Bruno Carette.
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is a 2017 space opera film written and directed by Luc Besson, and produced by his wife, Virginie Besson-Silla. It is based on the French science fiction comics series Valérian and Laureline, written by Pierre Christin, illustrated by Jean-Claude Mézières, and published by Dargaud. It stars Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne as Valerian and Laureline, respectively, with Clive Owen, Rihanna, Ethan Hawke, Herbie Hancock, Kris Wu and Rutger Hauer in supporting roles. Besson independently financed and personally funded the film. With a production budget of around $223 million, it is both the most expensive European and the most expensive independent film ever made.
Kursk is a 2018 disaster drama-thriller film directed by Thomas Vinterberg, based on Robert Moore's book A Time to Die, about the true story of the 2000 Kursk submarine disaster. It stars Matthias Schoenaerts, Léa Seydoux, Peter Simonischek, August Diehl, Max von Sydow, and Colin Firth. It was the last film featuring von Sydow to be released before his death in March 2020.
Taxi is a series of French comedy films, created by screenwriter and producer Luc Besson, consisting of five films primarily set in Marseille. In addition, an American-French remake of the 1998 original was made in 2004 and titled Taxi. In 2014 an American-French TV series called Taxi Brooklyn also aired.
Arthur, malédiction is a 2022 French meta psychological horror film directed by Barthélemy Grossmann. It is the fourth installment overall in the Arthur film series, which is based on the eponymous children's fantasy novel series by Luc Besson, and serves a spin-off in which the original trilogy is presented as a film-within-a-film. The film stars an ensemble cast, and follows a group of Arthur fans who discover the house that was used as one of the trilogy live-action sequences set, only to find themselves being hunted down one-by-one by a group of deranged role-players.
