How does Luc Besson manage to get a movie like this made? Take Francis Ford Coppola for example, whom has a sci-fi epic he'd like to make but will never get produced. Then Besson manages to get this weird, quirky SF epic funded with a giant budget. How does this happen?
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I wish Philip K. Dick had written Lord of Light
Well, instead of being frustrated about the fact that Coppola and others don't get the chance to make their movies, let us instead be grateful that some people do get green light to make their big project movies.
shareSimply because Luc Besson is his own producer now.
He has founded EuropaCorp, which is now able to release movies in US by itself, so he doesn't need any US studio green light.
Basically, he just have to call his team and say "hey guys, I want to make this".
Luc Besson is the European Jerry Bruckheimer... but he also writes and directs. He owns the means of production and can get anything he wants made.
Meanwhile, Coppola also owns the means of production, but has no distribution arm and isn't as savvy with preselling 'foreign' rights.
Additionally, Europacorp (in which Besson is a principal) recently launched a full-on distribution arm in the US called "RED." When you're launching a mini-major distributor, it helps to have a big, swinging dick project. Thus, this movie.
Because Besson has a good business sense. For every big movie he does, he funds a string of fairly succesfull small budget movies, which help him to pad up a bigger budget.
Also going to point out he's been wanting to make this film since the '90s and had the rights before he made "The Fifth Element", which also utilized the talents of one of the creators. His company also produced the anime as well, and that one ALSO took a long time to get made. So sometimes movies based on properties DO take a long time in development.
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