Besson reportedly worked on the first drafts of
Le Grand Bleu (
The Big Blue) while still in his teens. Out of boredom, he started writing stories, including the background to what he later developed as
The Fifth Element (1997), one of his most popular movies, inspired by the
French comic books he read as a teenager. At 18, Besson returned to his birthplace of Paris, where he took odd jobs in film to get a feel for the industry. He worked as an assistant to directors including
Claude Faraldo and
Patrick Grandperret. He directed three short films, a commissioned documentary, and several commercials. He then moved to the United States for three years, but returned to Paris, where he formed his own production company. He first named it
Les Films du Loup, then changed it to
Les Films du Dauphin.
Cinéma du look Critics such as Raphaël Bassan and Guy Austin cite Besson as a pivotal figure in the
Cinéma du look movement—a specific, highly visual style produced from the 1980s into the early 1990s. His early films
Subway (1985),
The Big Blue (1988) and
La Femme Nikita (1990) are all considered of this stylistic school. The term was coined by critic
Raphaël Bassan in a 1989 essay in
La Revue du Cinema n° 449. A partisan of the experimental cinema and friend of
New Wave ("
nouvelle vague") directors, Bassan grouped Besson with
Jean-Jacques Beineix and
Leos Carax as three directors who shared the style of
"le look". These directors were later critically described as "favouring style over substance, and spectacle over narrative". Besson, and most of the filmmakers so categorised, were uncomfortable with the label. He contrasted their work with France's
New Wave. "
Jean-Luc Godard and
François Truffaut were rebelling against existing cultural values and used cinema as a means of expression simply because it was the most avant-garde medium at the time," said Besson in a 1985 interview in
The New York Times. "Today, the revolution is occurring entirely within the industry and is led by people who want to change the look of movies by making them better, more convincing and pleasurable to watch. "Because it's becoming increasingly difficult to break into this field, we have developed a psychological armor and are ready to do anything in order to work," he added. "I think our ardor alone is going to shake the pillars of the moviemaking establishment."
Popular success Many of Besson's films have achieved popular, if not always critical, success. Reviews were mixed for
The Big Blue.
Kevin Thomas of the
Los Angeles Times wrote that the movie was "too long and initially awkward but is clearly the work of a visionary.
" Le Grand Bleu (The Big Blue) has become a
cult film in France over time. "When the film had its premiere on opening night at the
1988 Cannes Film Festival, it was mercilessly drubbed, but no matter; it was a smash," observed the
International Herald Tribune in a 2007 profile of Besson. "Embraced by young people who kept returning to see it again, the movie sold 10 million tickets and quickly became what the French call a 'film générationnel,' a defining moment in the culture." After Besson's documentary film
Atlantis (1991), he directed two critical and commercial successes:
Léon: The Professional (1994) and
The Fifth Element (1997) which would later become
cult films.
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999) was the last film Besson directed that was produced by the oldest production company in the world,
Gaumont, which had been producing his films since
Subway (1985). After
The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc he created his own studio,
EuropaCorp. From 2002 to 2005 Besson created the hugely successful
Arthur series of children's fantasy novels, which comprises
Arthur and the Minimoys,
Arthur and the Forbidden City,
Arthur and the Vengeance of Maltazard, and
Arthur and the War of the Two Worlds. He directed
Arthur and the Invisibles (2006), a feature film adaptation of the first two books of the collection, starring
Madonna and
Robert DeNiro. Combining
live action and animation, it was released in the UK and the US, as well as in France. Besson also produced the promotional movie for the
Paris 2012 Olympic bid.
Studio ambitions and difficulties In 2000, Besson superseded his production company by co-founding
EuropaCorp with Pierre-Ange Le Pogam, with whom he had frequently worked since 1985. Le Pogam had then been Distribution Director with
Gaumont. With EuropaCorp, Besson wanted to compete with the American major studios, but to maintain a stable of French directors and technicians producing in France, even if their films are most often in English with a foreign international star in the
lead role. EuropaCorp went public in 2006 to finance, with the help of the State, its own studios at the
Cité du Cinéma. It also sought financing and distribution partnerships in Japan and China. By 2011, when he directed a biopic of
Aung San Suu Kyi called
The Lady (original title
Dans la Lumiere), Besson was spending most of his time at EuropaCorp as a writer and producer, rather than a director: he had 44 writing credits and 103 producer credits, but only 17 directing credits. The film was a departure from Besson's favoured directorial genres, and from his preference to write the films he directs; the screenwriter was
Rebecca Frayn. Western critics singled out Besson's direction for negative comments;
Roger Ebert said: "Perhaps, given his strengths in genre films, he should have chosen not to direct this one…" The blockbuster
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) had a budget of around $180 million, making it both the most expensive European and the most expensive
independent film ever made. But by the summer of 2017, Chinese critics were snubbing it and the investment seemed impossible to make profitable. Besson's failure was repeated with his next film,
Anna (2019), placing his company in near bankruptcy and forcing him to sell it to a creditor and then close the free, no-degree-required
school for screenwriters and directors that he had founded in 2012.
Recent work Besson's film
June & John (2025) was shot
guerrilla-style in Los Angeles in 2020, during the
COVID-19 pandemic. Building on a shelved pre-pandemic project Besson had been developing for a Chinese smartphone brand, the film was shot using only smartphones and a 12-person crew, and stars then-unknown actors Matilda Price and Luke Stanton Eddy. He told
Deadline: "It was very joyous. It was really two actors and a director because of the lockdown … It felt good to be uniquely creative without the pressure of money." where it had its world premiere on 31 August 2023. It was released in French cinemas on 27 September 2023 by Apollo Films Distribution and
EuropaCorp Distribution, and had mixed reviews: at
Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 59% based on 71 reviews, but on the other hand received very positive audience feedback with 84% positive reviews. while
Metacritic, which uses a
weighted average, assigned the film a score of 45 out of 100 from 23 critics, audience feedback on Metacritic is also more positive than press reviews, with an average score of 67 out of 100. In summer 2024, Besson directed
Dracula, an adaptation of
Dracula starring
Caleb Landry Jones and featuring
Christoph Waltz.
Dracula is the 2025
French film that achieved the highest global box office, with nearly 30 million dollars. It was released in cinemas in the
United States in February 6th 2026.As with
Dogman,
Dracula of Luc Besson divided the press but was very popular with the public, with an average of 53% from the press and 81% from viewers on
Rotten Tomatoes.
Dracula of Luc Besson has met with notable success at the American box office, making $9 million in 10 days, a record for a
French film since 2017. In 2025 Luc Besson was announced as the director of
The Last Man, a post-apocalyptic science fiction film starring rapper
Snoop Dogg. He also wrote and produced the film
Father Joe, starring
Al Pacino, which will be released soon.
Regular collaborators In the early 1980s, Besson met
Éric Serra and asked him to compose the score for his first short film, ''L'Avant dernier''. He subsequently had Serra compose for other films. French actor
Jean Reno has appeared in several films by Besson, including (1983),
Subway (1985),
The Big Blue (1988),
La Femme Nikita (1990), and
Léon: The Professional (1994). He later collaborated with Kamen on the
Transporter action series (2002–2008), and they co-wrote
Taken (2008),
Taken 2 (2012), and
Taken 3 (2014), which all starred
Liam Neeson. In 2024, Besson mentioned his "fascination" with American actor
Caleb Landry Jones after working with him on
DogMan: "We got on so well on
DogMan and since then I’ve only had one wish and that was to make another film with him. He’s crazily talented. It’s something I haven’t seen since Gary Oldman." Scott Tobias wrote that his "slick, commercial" action movies were "so interchangeable—drugs, sleaze, chuckling
supervillainy, and
Hong Kong-style effects—that each new project probably starts with
white-out on the title page." American film critic
Armond White has praised Besson, whom he ranks as one of the best film producers, for refining and revolutionizing action film. He wrote that Besson dramatizes the struggle of his characters "as a conscientious resistance to human degradation". In 2012, film critic Eric Kohn wrote in
Indiewire: "Luc Besson’s filmography has been spotty for years, littered with equal amounts of sensationalistic pop art and flashy duds, a tendency that extends beyond his directing credits." ==Selected filmography==