The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 2017
Luc Besson bet his own studio on Europe's most expensive film, and it lost EuropaCorp $83M
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets cost about $180M, grossed $185M, and its underperformance drove EuropaCorp to a half-year loss and staff layoffs.
EuropaCorp · 2017-07-21
What happened
Director Luc Besson financed Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets through his own studio EuropaCorp, adapting the French comic series Valérian and Laureline on a budget of roughly $180 million — the most expensive independent and European film ever made at the time — with EuropaCorp covering a reported 10% of that cost after presales to 120 countries.
The film opened domestically to just $17 million, finishing outside the top four at the box office and prompting Deadline Hollywood to call it a domestic bomb, despite the scale of the visual production.
Valerian closed with $185 million worldwide against its roughly $180 million budget before marketing, and its underperformance directly drove EuropaCorp to post a half-year loss of $83.1 million, forcing the company into layoff consultations affecting up to 28% of its French staff.
Why it happened
- Besson committed his own studio's balance sheet to a budget scale it had never previously attempted at this size.
- The film relied on international presales to cover costs, leaving the studio exposed once the domestic opening came in weak.
- Marketing and release strategy didn't build a wide enough opening-weekend base for the source material's limited US name recognition.
- No contingency plan protected the studio's finances once box office fell well short of what the budget scale required.
The lesson
Betting your own company's balance sheet on one film's box office removes any margin for a weak opening weekend.
Aftermath
EuropaCorp laid off staff and scaled back its ambitions for future big-budget productions, and Besson did not attempt another film at Valerian's scale for years afterward.
Sources
- Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets — Wikipedia
- The Hollywood Reporter — 'Valerian' Leads EuropaCorp to Post $83 Million Loss
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