LUCY
Genre: Action-Thriller
Cast: Scarlett
Johansson and Morgan Freeman
Written
and Directed by: Luc Besson
Produced
by: Virginie
Besson-Silla
From La Femme Nikita and The
Professional to The
Fifth Element,
writer/director Luc Besson has created some of the toughest, most memorable
female action heroes in cinematic history. Now, Besson directs Scarlett
Johansson in Lucy, an action-thriller that tracks
a woman accidentally caught in a dark deal who turns the tables on her captors
and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic.
Lucy also stars Academy Award®
winner Morgan Freeman and is produced by Virginie Besson-Silla for
EuropaCorp.
Production information
From La Femme Nikita and The Professional to The Fifth
Element, writer/director LUC BESSON has created some of the toughest, most
memorable female action heroes in recent cinematic history. Now, Besson directs SCARLETT JOHANSSON (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Avengers) and Academy Award®
winner MORGAN FREEMAN (The Dark Knight
Rises, Oblivion) in Lucy,
an action-thriller that examines the possibility of what one human could truly
do if she unlocked 100 percent of her brain capacity and accessed the furthest
reaches of her mind.
It has long been
hypothesized that human beings only use a small percentage of our cerebral
capacity at any given time. For
centuries, speculative science has postulated what would occur if mankind could
actually evolve past that limit. Indeed,
what would happen to our consciousness and newfound abilities if every region
of the brain was concurrently active? If
each one of the 86 billion densely packed neurons in a human brain fired at
once, could that person become, in fact, superhuman?
In Besson’s story,
we meet Lucy (Johansson), a carefree young student living in Taiwan who is
tricked by her boyfriend into delivering a briefcase to a business contact. Before she can even comprehend the situation
in which she’s become ensnared, Lucy is grabbed and held hostage by the merciless
Mr. Jang (CHOI MIN SIK of Oldboy, Lady Vengeance). When his thugs surgically implant in our
heroine a package loaded with a powerful synthetic substance—one that would
likely kill her if it were to leak—her terror turns to desperation. Alongside a handful of fellow unwilling hosts,
she is sent to the airport with the objective of flying across the world as a transport
vessel for material that is priceless to her kidnappers.
When the chemical
is accidentally unleashed in and absorbed by Lucy’s system, her body begins the
unimaginable: her cerebral capacity is unlocked to startling, and previously
hypothetical, levels. As she attempts to
comprehend and incorporate the incredible changes in her mind and body, Lucy
begins to feel everything around her—space, air, vibrations, people, even
gravity—and develop superhuman traits including telepathy, telekinesis, expanded
knowledge and breathtaking control over matter.
While the
substance continues to awaken and unlock every dormant corner of her mind, Lucy
races across the planet to enlist the help of Professor Samuel Norman
(Freeman), whose decades of research on the brain’s potential makes him
unparalleled in the field…and the only person on Earth with the ability to see
where this might lead.
Aiding Lucy in her
quest to reach Dr. Norman is French police Capt. Pierre Del Rio (AMR WAKED of Syriana, TV’s House of Saddam), a dispassionate officer who commands his bureau. Although disturbed by Lucy’s seemingly
inhuman powers—ones that are growing by the minute—Del Rio would sacrifice his
own life to protect the young woman who looks to him to retain the last
vestiges of her humanity.
Relentlessly
pursued by her former captors, who will kill anyone to extract their product from
the woman who has become their biggest adversary, Lucy begins to turn the
tables and transform into a warrior evolved beyond human logic.
Bringing Besson’s
story from script to screen is a team of longtime behind-the-scenes collaborators
led by producer VIRGINIE
BESSON-SILLA (The Family, The
Lady), director of
photography THIERRY ARBOGAST (The
Professional, The Fifth Element),
production designer HUGUES TISSANDIER (The
Transporter, Taken), editor
JULIEN REY (The Family, The Lady), costume designer OLIVIER
BERIOT (Arthur and the Great Adventure,
The Family) and composer ERIC SERRA (The Fifth Element, The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc).
The executive
producer of Lucy is MARC SHMUGER (The Spectacular Now, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks).
ABOUT THE
PRODUCTION
Secrets of the Universe:
Science and Fiction Unite in Lucy
The human brain and its capabilities
have long puzzled and deeply fascinated the most accomplished of scientists. While it has customarily been understood that
we tap into much less of our mind’s capacity than we are capable of using, the
exact percentage has remained uncertain…and ever fluctuating. With that arresting thought in mind,
writer/director Luc Besson took the premise as a starting point for a storyline
for his new film. He imagined what it
would be like if we could access the furthest reaches of our brain, asking
himself how that would affect our understanding of life…and our role in it. He pondered: “Would we have more control over
ourselves and others?”
Besson was interested in the notion
of having an “average girl,” as he puts it, develop superhuman mental and
physical capabilities when her mind is unlocked. He surmises: “Lucy has problems, like anyone
else, and she doesn’t know what to do with her life. Yet she’s going to reach the most ultimate
knowledge in the universe.”
Producer Virginie Besson-Silla, who
has worked with Besson on three previous films—The Family, The Lady and The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle
Blanc-Sec—reveals that the writer/director actually tinkered with the
concept 10 years ago: “The basis of the story was there, but I don’t think Luc
was quite ready. I believe he wanted to
let it mature.” She pauses, “So he took
all those years to finally come back to it.”
Although Besson believed that the idea of
expanding one’s brain capacities made for tremendous action-thriller material,
he was particularly intent on grounding—at least in part—Lucy in scientific fact. The
filmmaker offers: “After I met with a few scientists, I was amazed by what they
told me: about cancer, about cells, about the fact that we have hundreds of
billions of cells that communicate with one another. Apparently, each cell sends out something like
1,000 signals per second. The Web is
nothing compared to that. It took me a
few years to find the right balance between what is real and what is fantasy.”
As he delved further into the
concept, Besson reached out to a number of scientists, including world-renowned
neurologist Yves Agid, who
co-founded the Brain & Spine Institute (ICM) that is based at the
Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, of which Besson is a founding member. Agid remembers the conversation he had with
Besson about a story that was “a combination of fact and fiction.” He says: “When Luc told me about the
screenplay, I found it extraordinary. Still,
I had to rein in his creativity a bit with facts, which was easy in the end,
because he understands everything so quickly.”
As the neurologist helped Besson
walk the line between theoretical reality and imagination, he began to see that
creativity for a filmmaker is not dissimilar to the skills needed to work as a
scientist. Agid says: “That’s what I
find splendid in the film: There are true facts. For instance, Lucy deals with the number of cells in the brain, the number of
signals per second produced by one cell, etc.
By taking advantage of all these figures, Luc implements a fascinating dynamic
throughout the film. Of course, the more
Lucy advances through the movie, the more the story becomes fictional, which I
find extremely robust. When you see the
film, you believe it. It grabs you
because it is grounded, to some extent, in reality.”
Besson walks us through the research
that informed his ultimate story: “There’s a combination of factors that make this
possible, involving really bad people and a new kind of drug. Well, actually, it’s not exactly a drug. In fact, it’s a natural substance that
pregnant women produce in the sixth week of natal development called CPH4. I came up with this idea, which according to
some doctors I spoke with, is not entirely illogical. At some point, when you open up the capacity
of your brain, if you can access 20 percent, you can open 30 percent. When you reach 30 percent, you can open 40
percent, and so on. It’s a domino
effect. So Lucy is colonizing her own
brain, and she can’t stop it. She doesn’t
want it, and she doesn’t even know
what to do with it.”
Earth’s New First Woman:
Lucy is Reborn
With such strong,
unique female characters as La Femme Nikita’s
titular character, Mathilda in The
Professional and Leeloo in The Fifth
Element, Besson has created some of the most ruthless, toughest female action
heroes in modern film. To portray the
lead in his latest film, he needed to find an actress who could be believable
as extremely vulnerable, as well as superpowered, when her exposure to an
illicit substance inadvertently makes her acquire incredible skills.
Besson-Silla describes the unlikely heroine of
this story: “Lucy is an average girl who’s having fun with her friends in Asia,
and there’s a lot of partying going on. She’s discovering life, but she’s going to
discover it the hard way…and go much further than she would ever expect.”
For the role, Besson and his
producer reached out to Scarlett Johansson, who has starred in intimate films
such as Lost in Translation and Her, as well as action blockbusters
including Iron Man 2, The Avengers and, most recently, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Besson was impressed by the actress’
discipline. He explains that she was
precise and professional from the get-go: “When we first met, Scarlett had read
the script and I enjoyed the way she talked about it. She was excited for the right reason, which
was the story. At that moment, it was a
done deal for me. She was definitely the
one.”
Johansson explains that one of her interests in
portraying Lucy is based on the fact that the character “is in a
transient phase in her life when we find her.
She’s figuring out who she is, and she’s feeling like she should
probably get her life on track.” The actress was not only attracted
to the material, but to Besson’s vision.
She notes: “The film poses some complex existential
questions. It would have been hard to
imagine how the script has evolved because so much of that is Luc’s
vision. Anything I could imagine the
film to look like, just from reading the descriptions in the script, pales in
comparison to the actual life that Luc breathed into
this project.”
Johansson acknowledges
that even though she was initially disoriented by the screenplay’s nonlinear structure,
she knew that she could trust the director.
Quite familiar with Besson’s work, she cast aside caution and signed on to
the film. “This is actually what drew me
to this project,” she insists. “I had to
trust Luc’s vision. I remember meeting him and he said, ‘You have to trust that I
know what this is about because it can be vague at times. But if you see what I’m seeing, you’ll
believe in it.’ So, I took a leap
of faith. He’s a formidable guy who knows what he sees
in his mind and wants that vision to be executed perfectly.”
Everyone involved in the production acknowledges
that Lucy was a highly demanding role. Still,
Johansson went beyond everyone’s expectations. Commends Besson-Silla: “It was all the more
difficult, as Lucy starts off as a plain girl and turns into, as it were, a
superhero. She goes through so much. Scarlett was able to take that journey easily.”
With such a clear vision of his protagonist,
Besson was able to devise a method to help his leading lady get in character. He explains: “We created something very funny,
which Scarlett had on her wall, to allow her to understand what reactions I
wanted from her when I asked her to play, say, 25 percent, or 50 percent, or 70
percent of her brainpower.
“For every 10
percent, we charted out what you could do with that percentage— your level of
knowledge and possibilities,” Besson continues.
“It was a very good guide. Every
morning she’d look at the chart to see which girl she had to play. If you look at the Lucy at the beginning and
the Lucy at the end, they have little in common. When we arrived on set, Scarlett was
exceptional. You can ask for whatever
you want and she says, ‘Okay.’ She’s
always willing to try.”
The actress admits that the most
challenging part was to portray Lucy as a truly relatable character, despite
the psychological and physical changes that she’s experiencing: “As the drug
kicks in, Lucy gradually loses the ability to empathize and to feel pain. Even though she can delve deeply into someone’s
memory and eventually control him physically, she doesn’t have any opinion. She loses her preconceived ideas or judgment
about the other person. It was difficult
to avoid making my performance flat and monotonous. You have to see the humanity behind her
circumstances.”
Evolution to Revolution:
Supporting Cast of the Action-Thriller
As her abilities keep evolving, Lucy
reaches out to Professor Samuel Norman, an expert on the human brain, to try to
understand what is happening to her.
Soon after she is supercharged, she finds herself able to do anything
from learning Chinese in an hour to beginning to control space and time. The production was fortunate enough to have Academy
Award® winner Morgan Freeman join the team as the world-renowned
neurologist whose lifelong focus is how we access the information stored in our
brain.
As Freeman is quite a science buff,
and particularly enthusiastic about the mind’s capacity, the actor was a
natural choice. Besson notes: “Morgan
Freeman is the ultimate professor, for two reasons. First of all, he’s fascinated by the theory we
develop in the movie because he’s very familiar with it, which I didn’t know
before we met for the film. It was a
pleasure for him just to talk about it. And secondly, he’s such a good actor that you
believe everything he says.”
Besson-Silla was
also thrilled to see Freeman come aboard. “Morgan is one of the only people who could
play God,” she enthuses. “So, to play
the character of wisdom in the film, it was pretty obvious that he was the
perfect actor.”
Freeman was equally excited to join
the cast, admitting that he holds his character in high esteem. “Professor Norman has written about the brain
for years,” he says. “He gives lectures
all over the world and has been at the Sorbonne, in Paris, for a number of
years. Because he’s preeminent in the
field, he is tracked down by Lucy, who’s trying to figure out what’s going on
with her brain.”
The veteran actor offers that Professor
Norman is flattered to be contacted by Lucy: “When she calls him up and says,
‘I’ve read everything you wrote,’ he replies, ‘You can’t have.’ And when she starts quoting what he wrote, he
says, ‘We’ve got to meet.”
When Lucy’s physical and mental abilities are
suddenly heightened, she becomes a most valuable prey for the mob who started
her down this journey, particularly for local crime boss Mr. Jang, played by
South Korean actor Choi Min Sik. “Mr. Jang
is the best villain I’ve come up with since Gary Oldman’s character in The Professional,” the writer/director reflects.
“Whereas Lucy is the ultimate intelligence, Mr. Jang is the ultimate
devil.”
Indeed, Besson wanted to push the envelope
when it came to creating Lucy’s nemesis. “In the film business, we’re always a
little shy about villains,” he states. “When you see the reality on the news, people
are much crueler than we can possibly imagine. So we have a lot of leeway when we work on a
villain. Mr. Jang is just a purely
villainous businessman. He knows that
there’s a 50 percent chance he’ll be dead tonight, so he doesn’t care much.”
The producer
agrees that Mr. Jang is the epitome of evil. “He has no limits,” Besson-Silla reflects. “He is the worst of humankind. He has no values, no love and no compassion. He’s just in it for business. I don’t think he has any emotion. Everything around him is just an object.”
Even though the
South Korean actor, best known for his role in the critically acclaimed Oldboy, did not speak a word of English
or French, Besson believed that he would fit the role perfectly. Says the director: “It’s funny because our
body language was our communication system. I’d play the scene, and he’d show me what he
made of it. We communicated almost like
monkeys at first!” Still, Besson can’t
speak highly enough of the actor: “I’m fascinated by Choi. He’s one of the greatest actors I’ve ever met,
and he’s just adorable and sweet.”
Besson-Silla
remembers that it took some time to convince the actor to join the cast. Actually, Lucy
is the first international film of which Min Sik has accepted to be a part. “In
the beginning, it wasn’t a sure thing that he was going to do the film,” she
recalls. “We had to go and meet him in
Korea, talk with him and discuss the story. And it was only at the very end that he said, ‘Okay,
I’m interested, I want to be in.’”
As a matter of
fact, Min Sik was baffled at first to hear that Besson wanted to meet him. Needless to say, this was an offer he couldn’t
refuse. “As a younger actor, I watched
Luc’s movies,” he recalls. “They were
always a great inspiration to me. So I
thought ‘After being an actor for so many years, I’ll finally meet this great
director.’ I think it all came out of my
great curiosity. I wondered how he
worked on set, what the spirit of the people would be, and what the locations
would be like.”
Even though her character was tortured
by Mr. Jang and his men, Johansson speaks highly of her on-screen partner: “It was wonderful working with Choi,” she says. “We didn’t speak the same language but we
could communicate very well with our expressions. So even though we were doing scenes that were
violent and cold and brutal, his presence was so enigmatic that we could
communicate in a kind of spiritual way. But he was lovely and warm, and was always
happy to be on set. He was also
wonderful to watch because he’s so incredibly expressive. Although Mr. Jang could easily just be seen as
evil or bad, Choi fills out this character and makes him very multifaceted.”
While Lucy is on
the run from the mob, she contacts Pierre Del Rio, a French police officer to
whom she gives a lead on smugglers trying to evade airport security. Del Rio, played by Egyptian performer Amr
Waked, is bewildered when the young lady calls him up, and he doesn’t initially
give much credit to her story. “He
thinks it’s a prank call, or someone who’s just taking the piss out of him,” offers
Waked, who is best known for his role in Stephen Gaghan’s critically acclaimed Syriana. “Eventually, he joins her on her journey and
finds out that she’s got some extra powers, although he doesn’t know where they
come from. He’s basically stunned by her
capabilities, and gradually, their relationship grows closer.”
Besson explains that Del Rio
embodies naiveté and that for a guy like him, who leads a pretty normal life,
Lucy seems like an extraterrestrial. “He’s
Voltaire’s Candide,” says the director. “He
realizes that Lucy’s powers are so huge that there’s nothing he can do. Del Rio represents the audience; he’s
basically you and me.”
The producer observes that the
policeman is the antithesis of Mr. Jang. “As Lucy puts it, Del Rio is a reminder of her
humanity because he represents kindness,” she shares. “And he’s the one who will be next to her
until the end and, in a way, protect her. She’s lost all her emotions by being exposed
to the drug, but when she’s with Del Rio, there’s a tiny spark of emotion that’s
still there.”
When his agent called to let him
know that Besson wanted to meet and was considering offering him a role for his
upcoming project, Waked was thrilled. “Luc Besson is looking for me? I’m looking for him,” Waked jokes. “Seriously, it was enough that Luc wrote the
script and was going to direct it for me to want to do the film. When you read the screenplay, you find out why
Luc is such an important director, writer and producer.”
Besson-Silla enjoyed the fact that
the Western audience wasn’t too familiar with the Egyptian performer: “What I
loved about him was that he’s a great actor and we haven’t seen him in many
films,” she states. “I think it’s
important to have new faces on screen.”
With the cast set, the producer
reflects upon Besson’s interest in making the film one about the way we
interact with our environment, and socially as well: “Luc wanted to show the
diversity on this planet and a mixture of all those different cultures. So we have Scarlett Johansson, who is
Caucasian, Morgan Freeman, who is African-American, Min Sik Choi, who is from
Korea, and Amr Waked, who hails from Egypt.”
Time Is Unity:
On Location for Lucy
Lensing in Taiwan
When Besson wrote the first version
of the script for Lucy 10 years ago,
he intended for the action to be set in Taipei, Taiwan. He had gone to the city in 1994 on a promotional
tour for The Fifth Element and loved
the people and the feel of the city. When the time came to scout locations for this
action-thriller, the filmmakers considered a few different Asian cities to lens
the picture—for budget and logistical purposes. Says Besson: “The funny thing is that, in the
end, we shot in Taipei and picked the very hotel I’d stayed in 20 years ago. I couldn’t have come up with anything better
than what I had on my mind all those years.”
Besson-Silla affirms that there was
no way Taipei could be re-created elsewhere. “From the very beginning, he had always
pictured the movie in Taipei, because Luc wanted it to be set in an Asian city where
things are moving so fast. Taipei fit
the bill perfectly. Besides, there aren’t
that many European or American films that have been shot there.”
The director enjoyed the shooting
conditions in Taiwan, and he actively encourages other filmmakers to film their
movies there. “The people who live in
Taipei are the gentlest people I’ve ever met,” Besson enthuses. “The authorities are trustworthy and helpful
with film crews. As well, you have all
kinds of real locations—city buildings, seascapes, beaches, forests, mountains—all
within 100 miles.” He pauses, “On top of that, this place has
the best dumplings in the whole world.”
Lucy marks
Johansson’s first time filming in Taipei. “I just loved being able to explore that city,”
she says. “It was so welcoming. In some ways, just the fact that we were all
so tired and jet-lagged and out of our element added to the disorientation of
my character and the place she’s coming out of when she starts being affected
by this drug.”
In Taiwan, it is customary to say
prayers and give offerings to the spirits at the very beginning of any film
production. Producer Besson-Silla
recalls that experience: “On the first day, we had a table set up with food and
drinks. When I came on set, I was like, ‘What
is this table in the middle of the set?’
Someone said, ‘It’s for the spirits.’ It was a great experience, and I loved being
able to go to another country and explore the local culture. I believe it brings a lot to the crew and to
the film.”
Besson also fell under the spell of
the country’s traditions and recounts the production’s first day: “Everyone was
holding sticks of incense in their hands and said a prayer in Chinese. Then we bowed, facing north, west, south and
east, to chase all the demons from the set. And it worked because we never had a single demon
for the entire production. It was so sweet and touching to see that. No matter what your religion, communion is
something common to everyone.”
À Paris
After Lucy flees Taiwan, she ends up
in Paris, where some of the most nail-biting action scenes of the production were
shot. Key locations include the famed
Rue de Rivoli, just near the Louvre Museum and the Tuileries Garden, the
world-renowned Sorbonne University, the Val-de-Grâce military hospital, where high-ranking
French officials are treated, and a bustling flea market.
As Besson-Silla remarks, when it
came to lensing the film’s most intense car chases, the team decided to shoot
in the middle of summer, when there are fewer people in Paris. Says the producer: “Luc had this crazy idea of
having Lucy drive her car against traffic on Rue de Rivoli, which is a very
busy four-lane, one-way street, between the Louvre and Concorde Square. And there she goes at full speed, in the
middle of the day! It was pretty astonishing.”
The director was intent on shooting
one of the most challenging action sequences of his entire production in a
Paris flea market. “We were in a flea
market full of people, at 2 in the afternoon, and cars were just flying all
over the place and landing on fruits and vegetables,” he laughs. “There was a lot of security, and after shooting
for three days, we had a pretty good stunt.”
Min Sik also enjoyed working in
Paris: “Paris has such great food that it’s been very painful for me to resist
the delicious French cuisine,” he says.
“I think I’ve gained some weight, so it hasn’t helped me at all,” he
laughs.
Cité du Cinéma
Besides shooting on location in
Paris, the production lensed portions of the film at a soundstage belonging to
the new Cité du Cinéma, Besson’s nine-studio facility just outside Paris. The 102,500-square-foot state-of-the-art
studio has already hosted several major productions, including recent films
such as 3 Days to Kill, The Family, Taken 2 and The Hundred-Foot
Journey.
Most of the interiors—such as the
hotel suite—and parts of the Sorbonne University were re-created at the
soundstage. Besson-Silla elaborates: “It’s
much more convenient to work in a studio because it’s a more controlled
environment. We had so many visual
effects that being on a set made it a lot easier to organize.”
The director remembers the Sorbonne
set: “This is one of the oldest universities in the world, and we put more than
2,000 rounds of bullets into the walls everywhere. So on the first day, it was all clean. Then, day after day, we just shot the hell out
of the place. You couldn’t even see
anything in the end because it became so foggy. I’ll keep in mind an image of the first day—when
everything was so clean—and of the last day, when you couldn’t even recognize
the Sorbonne.” Besson muses: “The funny
thing is that the Sorbonne is all about knowledge, but I dropped out of school
at an early age to make films. Now, here
I was, making a film on knowledge and intelligence and destroying the ultimate
embodiment of knowledge.”
Johansson marvels at the sets built
at the Cité du Cinéma: “The sets are massive and really detailed,” she comments.
“We could be in an apartment, or in a
luxurious Taipei hotel suite, or anywhere else for that matter. I was travelling through different universes,
all within the studio.”
VFX and Sounds from the
Presidio of San Francisco
Although a Besson production had
never incorporated quite so many visual and special effects before, the
director admits he’s been working with effects since The Fifth Element, 17 years ago.
As he puts it, he wasn’t “some rookie coming in and being lost because
there were green screens everywhere.”
Now, as Lucy involved more
than 1,000 special effects shots, the filmmakers decided to go for the world
experts at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) in the Presidio of San Francisco. Senior visual effects supervisor NICHOLAS
BROOKS, who won an Academy Award® for his work on What Dreams May Come and most recently
served in the same capacity on Now You
See Me, oversaw the process.
Says the director: “That’s the mecca
of visual effects. Mr. Lucas is the
master. So we went to them, they read
the script and were interested. It was a
real treat working with them on this film because they’re as kind as they’re
good. But also, on this type of project,
I love to share ideas. There were so many
young people working there who had ideas and were willing to try things. Filmmakers often say, ‘We’re doing things
like this, and not like that.’ But I
said, ‘Here’s my idea, but if you come up with something better, I may change
my mind.’ It became a truly
collaborative effort and made for some great teamwork.”
Waked speaks for the cast about
learning so much about special effects and visual effects on this production:
“It’s the first time I’ve done so much green screen on a film and so much
shooting in a studio,” he observes. “I’m
learning a new technique that I’ve always wondered about. Coming from Egypt, we hardly shoot so many
special effects in a single film, so it’s been quite an education for me.” Of course, he adds, “this requires a lot more
focus and concentration than when you’re actually on location, because you
substitute all of that with your imagination.
So instead of just focusing on the character and the moment you’re
playing, you’re also focusing on the place you’re supposed to be in.”
Supplementing the stunning visual
effects on Lucy with signature sound is
Skywalker Sound’s SHANNON J. MILLS, who served as the production’s supervising
sound editor and sound designer. The
winner of four MPSE Golden Reel Awards for Best Sound Editing on Avatar, Cars, Atlantis: The Lost
Empire and Titanic, Mills helped
Besson create the signature sounds for Lucy
that are complemented by supervising sound editor GUILLAUME BOUCHATEAU’s intricate
sound design and two-time Oscar® winner David Parker’s (The Bourne Ultimatum, The English Patient) incomparable sound
mixing.
Finally, César Award-winning
composer Eric Serra’s created the film’s mesmerizing, pulse-pounding score
while British musician and
composer DAMON ALBARN, of Blur and Gorillaz, has written a new song for Lucy entitled “Sister Rust.” This
beautiful, melodic ballad closes the film. About his work with Besson, Albarn
says: “Luc has a very particular style and approach to filmmaking, which made
me want to create something distinctive and cinematic.”
Close to the Talent:
Besson’s Signature Style
A Besson production looks like no
other. That definitely has to do with
the fact that the writer/director is deeply involved in every aspect of the
shoot. Besson-Silla notes that Besson
worked in every department before he became a full-fledged director. It wasn’t surprising for fellow cast and crew
to see Besson add fake blood on some extras or to touch up Johansson’s makeup,
while he was at the camera.
The producer describes her
director’s process: “Luc is very hands-on. For him, there’s no wall between the technique
and the filming of a scene. When he
wants things done, he’ll just go and do it. That’s how he gets the intensity out of the
scenes and the actors. Once you’re on
set, the most important thing is to give the actors center stage and not to
take care of the technical side of things. The performers appreciate the fact that he’s
close to them, holding the camera and talking to them as he’s filming.”
Besson adds that he has such a clear
vision of the picture he is trying to achieve that he likes to have the camera
with him most of the time: “I’m either at the camera, or I have the
camera on my shoulder. I like to be very
close to the actors. I’ve realized that,
when you say, ‘Action,’ it’s like sticking a syringe in the actor’s arm. It’s an anesthetic. Between the moment, you say, ‘Action’ and ‘Cut,’
he’s on an anesthetic. He’s someone else.
So I don’t want to break that. Sometimes in the middle of a line, I might
say, ‘Okay, breathe. Do it again. Say it again. Go back to the beginning.’ I don’t cut because I want to get the most I
can from the state the actor is in. They
appreciate that because what’s difficult for them is to build up that pressure
for ‘Action!’”
The cast members find the director’s
approach both rewarding and demanding. Johansson was particularly taken with Besson’s
directing style: “Luc has a very specific
vision of how he wants each scene to look. That can be tough, but I appreciate that in a
director. I appreciate the attention to
detail and that unwillingness to settle for anything less. It can be exhausting, but in the end, I never
left the set feeling, ‘I don’t know if we really got that.’ He’s emphatic about the fact that he settles for nothing less than
perfect. And that’s great!”
Waked agrees with his leading lady: “The most
interesting thing about working with Luc is that he’s the cameraman. When the director says, ‘Stop’ or ‘Cut,’ I
immediately look at the face of the cameraman. That’s my first audience, right there. And depending on his face, I think to myself, ‘Okay,
that went well’ or ‘that didn’t go well.’ So whenever you see that particular look on
Luc’s face, you know for sure that you’re doing the right thing. At the same time, he doesn’t waste time
because he’s the one framing, he’s the one moving the camera. There isn’t much time wasted between what you
did wrong and what you did right. He’s a
director who knows precisely every little atom in his frame, where he wants it
and how he wants it. It was very educating
for me to work with him and, hopefully, I am a better actor for it!”
Min Sik praises
the heartwarming atmosphere on the set, stating that both cast and crew members
were inclusive even though he didn’t speak either French or English: “Even if
the culture and the language are different, we were all working for the same
goal. The people were so professional
and they were all kind to me. I was
moved by them. We were always laughing
and joking around. So I have only wonderful
memories of the entire shoot.”
Professor Agid,
who helped the director develop the project, is excited by the film and the
experience it provides: “Lucy is a
contribution to knowledge on the brain. Interestingly enough, if you talk to people on
the street, they know what an intestine is, they know what the heart is, even
if they sometimes think that emotions are in the heart,” he laughs. “But, in fact, they don’t know what the brain
is. It’s unbelievable. So I hope that this film, which is fascinating,
will encourage people’s interest in the brain. What you read on the brain is so complicated,
so boring and so difficult to understand that the people who see the film will
be interested to learn more about the brain.”
More than a
decade after he wrote the original script for Lucy, Besson is finally ready for the world to see his years-long
labor of love. He concludes: “I want
people to come out of the film and say, ‘Oh, my God! I’d love to find out more about the brain and
intelligence,’ and then go online to learn more about it.”
****
Universal
Pictures presents a EuropaCorp production—in co-production with TF1 Films
productions—with the participation of Canal+, Cine+ and TF1: Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson,
Morgan Freeman, Choi Min Sik, Amr Waked.
The original score is by Eric Serra, and its costume designer is Olivier
Beriot. The editor is Julien Rey, and
the production designer is Hugues Tissandier.
The director of photography is Thierry Arbogast, AFC, and the executive
producer is Marc Shmuger. Lucy is produced by Virginie
Besson-Silla. The film is written and
directed by Luc Besson. © 2014 Universal
Studios. www.lucymovie.com
ABOUT THE
CAST
Tony and BAFTA
award-winning actress SCARLETT JOHANSSON (Lucy) has proven to be one of
Hollywood’s most talented young actresses. The Golden Globe Award nominee
recently starred in Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier,
opposite Chris Evans; Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin; and Jon Favreau’s ensemble comedy Chef,
opposite Robert Downey, Jr. and Dustin Hoffman. In addition, she lent her
voice to Spike Jonze’s critically acclaimed sci-fi romance Her, in the
role of Samantha, an operating system, and earned the Best Actress Award at the
Rome Film Festival. She also starred in
Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut, Don Jon. Next, Johansson
will reprise her role as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow in the upcoming Avengers:
Age of Ultron.
In 2003,
Johansson received rave reviews and was awarded the Upstream Prize for Best
Actress at the Venice Film Festival for her starring role opposite Bill Murray
in Lost in Translation, the critically acclaimed second film by director
Sofia Coppola. Additionally, she won a
Tony Award in 2010 for her Broadway debut in Arthur Miller’s A View from the
Bridge, opposite Liev Schreiber. In 2013, Johansson wrapped her
second run on Broadway as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
At age 14,
Johansson attained worldwide recognition for her performance as Grace MacLean,
the teen traumatized by a riding accident in Robert Redford’s The Horse
Whisperer. She went on to star in Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World,
garnering Best Supporting Actress at the Toronto Film Critics Association
Awards. Johansson was also featured in Joel and Ethan Coen’s dark drama The
Man Who Wasn’t There, opposite Billy Bob Thornton and Frances
McDormand.
Her other film
credits include The Avengers; Hitchcock, opposite Anthony
Hopkins; Cameron Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo; the box-office hit Iron Man
2; Paul Weitz’s In Good Company; A Love Song for Bobby Long,
opposite John Travolta, which garnered her a Golden Globe Award nomination (her
third in two years); Woody Allen’s Match Point, for which she earned her
fourth consecutive Golden Globe Award nomination in three years; He’s Just
Not That Into You; Vicky Cristina Barcelona; The Other Boleyn
Girl; The Spirit; Girl With a Pearl Earring, opposite Colin
Firth; The Island, opposite Ewan McGregor; Brian De Palma’s The Black
Dahlia; Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige; and The Nanny Diaries.
Additionally,
Johansson was seen in Rob Reiner’s comedy North and the thriller Just
Cause, with Sean Connery and Laurence Fishburne, and had a breakthrough
role at age 12 in the critically praised Manny & Lo, which earned
her a Film Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Female Lead.
A New York
native, Johansson made her professional acting debut at age eight in the
off-Broadway production of Sophistry, with Ethan Hawke, at New York’s
Playwrights Horizons theater.
Academy Award®-winning
actor MORGAN FREEMAN (Professor Norman) is one of the most recognizable
figures in American cinema. His works are among the most critically and
commercially successful films of all time. Freeman himself ranks 10th
among the world’s top-grossing actors of all time, with his films having earned
more than $3 billion in cumulative ticket sales. Whether a role requires
an air of gravitas, a playful smile, a twinkle of the eye or a world-weary yet
insightful soul, Freeman’s ability to delve to the core of a character and
infuse it with a quiet dignity has resulted in some of the most memorable
portrayals ever recorded on film.
Freeman won an Academy Award®
in 2005 for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for his role in Million
Dollar Baby. In 1990, he won a Golden Globe Award for Best
Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture—Comedy/ Musical for his performance
in Driving Miss Daisy. Freeman also received Academy Award®
nominations in 1988 for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Street Smart,
in 1995 for Best Actor in a Leading Role for The Shawshank Redemption
and in 2010 for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Invictus.
Freeman was honored with the
Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 2012 Golden Globe Awards. In 2011, Freeman
received the 39th AFI Life Achievement Award.
In 2000, Freeman was honored
with the Hollywood Outstanding Achievement in Acting Award at the Hollywood
Film Festival. He won the coveted
Kennedy Center Honor in 2008 for his distinguished acting career.
In 2009, Freeman won the
National Board of Review award for Best Actor for his performance as Nelson
Mandela in the acclaimed film Invictus. In addition to his Academy
Award® nomination for Best Actor, he received a Golden Globe Award
nomination and a Broadcast Film Critics Association nomination for the
role. The picture was produced by Revelations Entertainment, the company
he co-founded with Lori McCreary in 1996, with a mission to produce films that
reveal truth. Since its inception, Revelations has continued to be a frontrunner
in the field of digital technology. Other Revelations features include The
Code, The Magic of Belle Isle, Levity, Under
Suspicion, Mutiny, Bopha!, Along Came a Spider, Feast
of Love, 10 Items or Less, The Maiden Heist and The 16th
Man, part of the Peabody
Award-winning ESPN “30 for 30” documentary series.
Through Revelations
Entertainment, Freeman serves as an executive producer with McCreary on CBS’
upcoming Madam Secretary, starring Téa Leoni, which debuts in September.
Freeman hosts and is an executive
producer for the Primetime Emmy Award-nominated series Through the Wormhole
with Morgan Freeman. In its fifth season on the Science Channel, the
show is produced in conjunction with Revelations Entertainment.
Freeman will be seen in the
upcoming films The Last Knights, Eagle Films and Revelations
Entertainment’s Love Like That and Warner Bros. Pictures’ Dolphin
Tale 2.
Most recently, Freeman
starred in Transcendence, The Lego Movie, Last Vegas, Now
You See Me, Oblivion, Olympus Has Fallen and The Dark
Knight Rises.
Freeman narrated the Science
Channel program Stem Cell Universe and the IMAX documentary Island of
Lemurs: Madagascar. He will be heard narrating the upcoming
historical documentary We the People. Past narrations include two
Academy Award®-winning documentaries: The Long Way Home and March
of the Penguins.
Freeman’s past acting
credits include Dolphin Tale, Born to be Wild 3D, The Dark
Knight, The Bucket List, Glory, Clean and Sober, Lean
on Me, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Unforgiven, Se7en, Kiss the Girls, Amistad,
Deep Impact, Nurse Betty, The Sum of All Fears, Bruce
Almighty, Coriolanus, Attica, Brubaker, Eyewitness,
Death of a Prophet and Along Came a Spider.
After beginning his acting
career on the off-Broadway stage productions of The Niggerlovers and the
all African-American production of Hello, Dolly!, Freeman segued into
television. He played several recurring characters on the long-running
Children’s Television Workshop classic The Electric Company in
1971-76. Looking for his next challenge, he set his sights on both the
“Great White Way” and silver screen simultaneously and quickly began to fill
his resume with memorable performances.
In 1978, Freeman won a Drama
Desk award for his role as Zeke in The Mighty Gents; he was also nominated
for a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play.
His stage work continued to
earn him accolades and awards, including Obie Awards in 1980, 1984 and 1987 and
a second Drama Desk nomination in 1987 for the role of Hoke Colburn, which he
created for the Alfred Uhry play Driving Miss Daisy and reprised in the
1989 movie of the same name.
In his spare time, Freeman
loves the freedom of both sea and sky; he is a longtime sailor and has a
private pilot’s license. He also has a love for blues and seeks to keep
it in the forefront through his Ground Zero Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi,
the birthplace of blues music. In 1973, he co-founded the Frank Silvera
Writers’ Workshop, now in its 41st season. The workshop seeks
to serve successful playwrights of the new millennium. He is a member of
the board of directors of Earth Biofuels (now known as: Evolution Energy), a
company whose mission is to promote the use of clean-burning fuels. He
also supports Artists for a New South Africa and the Campaign for Female
Education (CAMFED).
Freeman has been named as
one of Forbes’ Most Trustworthy Celebrities each of the five times the
list has been published since 2006.
Born in Cairo, Egypt, in
1972, AMR WAKED (Pierre Del Rio)
studied economics and theater at The American University in Cairo. At the beginning of his career as an actor,
Waked joined the Temple Theatre troupe in 1994 and the Yaaru Theatre troupe in
1999, where he received his training and developed skills as a stage
performer. Drawing on his onstage
experience, Waked was able to land his first role on the big screen in 1998 in
Osama Fawzy’s Gannet el Shayateen.
Waked’s award-winning performance paved the way for him to become a
popular actor, famous for his gravity and vast range.
In 2005, Waked was seen in
Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana, his first role in an international
movie. His performance was well-received
and brought him more opportunities in international productions, including House
of Saddam and Lasse Hallström’s Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. Also in 2005, Waked co-founded the production
company zad communication and production, which aims to focus on developmental
and social issues in Egypt and the Middle East.
In 2012, zad communication
and production produced its first feature film, Winter of Discontent,
directed by Ibrahim El Batout, which premiered at the 69th Annual
Venice Film Festival.
CHOI MIN SIK (Mr.
Jang) was born in Seoul, South Korea, on April 27, 1962. Min Sik made his acting debut in Kuro Arirang in 1989, and has since
appeared in such films as All that Falls
Has Wings, Our Twisted Hero, No. 3, The Quiet Family, Swiri, Happy End, Failan and Painted Fire,
and television series Moon of Seoul
and The Age of Ambition.
In Oldboy, he starred as Oh Dae-su, a man who has been locked up in a
private makeshift prison for 15 years by someone he doesn’t know. Oldboy
won the Grand Prix at the 57th Annual Cannes Film Festival and
earned Min Sik global recognition. After
that, he appeared in films such as Springtime,
Crying Fist and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance.
Min Sik is one of the
leading actors of South Korea and has received numerous Best Actor awards,
including at the Dae Jong Film Awards, 35th Annual Baeksang Arts
Awards, the 4th Annual Deauville Asian Film Festival, 2012 Blue
Dragon Awards, the Korean Association of Film Critics’ Awards, Chunsa Film
Festival and the 3rd Annual Korea Film Awards. In addition, he was named Actor of the Year
at the 7th Annual Directors’ Cut Awards and won Best Supporting
Actor at the 38th Asia Pacific Screen Awards.
Min Sik was inspired to
become an actor by watching films directed by Ha Gil-jong. He joined the drama company Roots when he was
a senior in high school. After
graduating from high school, he entered Dongguk University and majored in
theater and drama. He shares: “What I
learned in university was not just basic skills of acting. I learned what characteristics one should
have to be an actor. I learned the right
characteristics through acting in plays; the kind of attitudes and aptitudes to
be nurtured as an actor.” Professor Ahn
Min-soo, who taught Min Sik at Dongguk University, helped him pave the way to
become a successful actor.
After graduation, Min Sik
appeared on stage in a number of plays, including Equus. Nearly 10 years after
starting his acting career, he rose to “overnight” stardom starring in the TV
drama Years of Ambition. He next played Ma Dong-pal, a prosecutor with
a hot temper, in No. 3.
Most recently, Min Sik
appeared in Nameless Gangster: Rules of
the Time and New World.
ABOUT THE
FILMMAKERS
LUC BESSON (Written and Directed by)
began his career in cinema in 1977,
working a number of assistant director positions in France and the United
States, and thereby gradually positioning himself as one of the few French
directors and producers with an international scope.
In 1983, Besson made his directorial debut with The Last Battle, which earned him recognition at the Avoriaz
Fantastic Film Festival.
Two years later, he directed Subway,
which starred Isabelle Adjani and Christopher Lambert. The film received three César Awards. Besson’s visual style was clearly
established.
Building on his success, Besson wrote and directed The Big Blue. Though poorly received at the Cannes Film
Festival, the film went on to become a veritable social phenomenon.
Despite an unfavorable critical climate,
La Femme Nikita (1990) and Léon: The
Professional (1994) were both publicly acclaimed, solidly establishing his
popularity in France and earning him an international reputation.
Between these films, Besson directed Atlantis
(1991), a documentary aimed at raising awareness about the beauty of nature and
the need to protect the environment.
In 1995, he launched into directing a bold science-fiction film: The Fifth Element. The blockbuster
became one of the biggest box-office hits of any French film in the United
States. In 1998, Besson took home a
César Award for Best Director.
In 1999, he directed his version of Joan
of Arc, The Messenger: The Story of
Joan of Arc, which earned him another nomination for Best Director at the
César Awards.
In 2000, he was named President of the Jury for the 53rd
Annual Cannes Film Festival, becoming the youngest jury president in the
history of the festival.
Also in 2000, Besson co-created EuropaCorp and devoted a majority of the
next five years to production, making EuropaCorp one of the major studios of
the European film industry.
In 2005, he returned to directing with Angel-A. In 2006, he
directed and co-wrote his first animated picture, Arthur and the Invisibles, which was adapted from the book he
wrote. Arthur and the Invisibles spawned two sequels: Arthur 2: The Revenge of Maltazard (2009) and Arthur 3: The War of the Two Worlds (2010).
In 2010, Besson adapted Jacques Tardi’s series of graphic novels “The
Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec,” for the screen, which starred
Louis Bourgoin in the title role.
In 2011, he directed Michelle Yeoh in The Lady, about Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
In 2013, Besson brought Tonino Benacquista’s acclaimed novel “Malavita” to the screen in The Family, which starred Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Throughout his directing career, Besson has directed music videos for a
number of artists, including Serge Gainsbourg and Mylène Farmer, as well as
commercials for internationally renowned brands.
In addition to the films he has directed, Besson has written more than
20 screenplays for features, including the Taxi
series and Taken 2, which currently
lays claim to being the biggest box-office hit of any French film in the United
States.
VIRGINIE BESSON-SILLA (Produced by) was born in Ottawa,
Canada, to a family of diplomats and spent her childhood traveling the world,
from Mali and Senegal to the United States and France.
After graduating from The American University of Paris with a degree in
business administration, Besson-Silla sought her first job in the field she
loved more than any: cinema.
In 1994, Besson-Silla began working for Patrice Ledoux, general director
of Gaumont Film Company, where she saw Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element through to the release, followed by Besson’s The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc.
In 1999, Besson founded EuropaCorp and offered Besson-Silla a position
in the venture. She accepted and produced
her first film, Yamakasi—Les samouraïs des temps modernes, a year later. Yamakasi—Les samouraïs des temps modernes
debuted to huge success and earned more than $27 million in its box-office run.
Over the course of thirty years, MARC SHMUGER (Executive
Producer) has distinguished himself through hands-on business and creative
leadership in the film industry. Shmuger
is the CEO of Global Produce, a production company with a first-look deal at
Universal Pictures. The company’s first
two productions, We Steal Secrets: The
Story of WikiLeaks and The
Spectacular Now, premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and garnered
tremendous critical acclaim. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks won
the Producers Guild of America’s award for Outstanding Producer of Documentary
Motion Pictures and was nominated for BAFTA, Writers Guild of America and
International Documentary Association awards.
In 2013, The Spectacular Now
won the Special Jury Prize for Acting at the Sundance Film Festival and was
named one of the Top 10 Independent Films by the National Board of Review.
Prior to Global Produce, Shmuger worked
at Universal Pictures for 12 years, rising from president of marketing to vice
chairman and then to chairman in 2006.
As chairman, Shmuger green-lighted, developed and distributed a wide
variety of highly successful movies, including The Bourne Ultimatum, American
Gangster, Inglourious Basterds, Wanted, Knocked Up and Mamma Mia! Under Shmuger’s leadership, Universal
Pictures’ films were among the industry’s most acclaimed by critics and awards’
groups, earning a notable 54 Oscar® nominations, 78 BAFTA
nominations and 45 Golden Globe nominations.
Prior to joining Universal Pictures,
Shmuger worked for seven years in marketing positions at Sony Pictures Entertainment,
rising to executive vice president of marketing, where he created and
supervised campaigns for many successful films, including Men in Black, Air Force One,
Bram Stoker’s Dracula, In the Line of Fire and Groundhog Day.
Shmuger’s long history of innovative
achievement in marketing and distribution has been recognized with top prizes
from every major advertising group, including multiple Clio, Telly, Addy, New
York Festivals World’s Best Advertising and Key Art awards. Advertising Age honored Shmuger in
1999 and 2000 as the Entertainment
Marketer of the Year, making him the first person to ever receive this
distinction twice.
Shmuger is a
member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and has served on the
board of trustees for the American Film Institute. He and his wife, Louise Hamagami, are
actively involved in, and serve on, multiple boards for charities that focus on
underprivileged children, education and Africa.
The couple has two sons.
Shmuger is a
magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Wesleyan University.
THIERRY
ARBOGAST, AFC (Director of Photography) has
collaborated with Luc Besson for more than 20 years, after meeting on La Femme Nikita in 1989.
Passionate about photography and cameras, Arbogast halted his school studies
at age 17 and accepted a small job in the French film industry. He draws inspiration from other
cinematographers, including Vittorio Storaro (Apocalypse Now) and Gordon Willis (The Godfather series).
Arbogast’s career spans more than 40 years and 60 movies, including Yves
Amoureux’s Le beauf, Besson’s Léon: The Professional, Gilles Mimouni’s
The Apartment, Pitof’s Catwoman, Joachim Rønning and Espen
Sandberg’s Bandidas, Frédéric
Forestier and Thomas Langmann’s Asterix
at the Olympic Games and Atiq Rahimi’s The
Patience Stone.
Arbogast has won three César Awards for Best Photo for his work on Le hussard sur le toit (The Horseman on the Roof), Bon voyage and The Fifth Element. In 1997,
he received the Technical Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival for She’s So Lovely and The Fifth Element. In 2006,
he received the Special Mention and Audience Award at the Manaki Brothers
International Cinematographers’ Film Festival for Tajnata kniga (The Secret
Book).
HUGUES TISSANDIER (Production
Designer) served as the production designer of one of the boldest European
cinematic productions: the Arthur and the
Invisibles trilogy of animated films, written and directed by Luc
Besson.
Tissandier
began his collaboration with Besson in 1998 with The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. In 2011, he won the César Award for Best Set
Design for The Extraordinary Adventures
of Adèle Blanc-Sec, also directed by Besson.
Tissandier’s
additional film credits include The
Transporter, Taken, The Lady and The Family.
JULIEN REY (Editor) began his film career editing the short film L’ancien in 2002. Since then, Rey has edited films such as Arthur and the Great Adventure, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle
Blanc-Sec, The Lady and The Family. Lucy marks
his fifth collaboration as editor for writer/director Luc Besson.
OLIVIER BERIOT (Costume Designer) has served as the costume designer for more than 50
films. Beriot is a repeat collaborator
with writer/director Luc Besson, working with him on several films, including The Lady, The Family, The Extraordinary
Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec and Arthur
and the Invisibles.
Beriot most recently helmed the costume department for McG’s 3 Days to Kill. Up next, Beriot’s work can be seen in the
third installment of the global
juggernaut Taken series, Taken 3, which is co-written by Besson.
French
composer ERIC SERRA (Original Score
by) wrote his first film score for Luc Besson’s Le dernier combat (The
Last Battle) and has since collaborated with the director 13
times—most recently on the biographical drama The Lady, which
starred Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis.
Serra provided the synthesizer score for GoldenEye and scored
the Bruce Willis sci-fi thriller The Fifth Element. In addition, he wrote the music for John
McTiernan’s action film Rollerball, the romantic comedy Jet
Lag and the martial-arts film Bulletproof Monk. His
music can currently be heard in the Cirque du Soleil show CRISS ANGEL Believe in Las Vegas.
Serra was
born in Paris to popular French songwriter Claude Serra. The younger Serra played guitar and bass in
various jazz and rock ensembles during the ’70s and ’80s before being solicited
to write the music for Besson’s short film L’avant dernier. Over the course of his career, he has been
nominated for six César Awards for Best Music, winning one for his work on
Besson’s The Big Blue (Le grand bleu).
—lucy—
