Luc Besson bet his own studio on Europe's most expensive film, and it lost EuropaCorp $83M

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.