WITH a budget of £123m, Luc Besson’s forthcoming science-fiction movie Valerian is one of the most expensive European productions planned.
However, the director is threatening to shoot it in Hungary rather than his native France if the authorities deny him up to £14.5m in tax credits because the film will be in English.
“I want to make it in my own country with a French crew. But I’m making a French film in English, so I’m entitled to zero,” Besson said last week.
Described as a space opera, Valerian, scheduled for release in 2017, is to star the British actors Cara Delevingne and Clive Owen. It is based on the classic graphic novel series Valérian and Laureline, by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières.
France offers generous subsidies to films made in the country, but only if at least 40% of the dialogue is in French. The rule was set after the Second World War to stem a flood of foreign, mainly American, movies.
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Under a law introduced 20 years ago, 40% of music played on national radio must also be French.
A British film maker who has received French funding said the system was “generous” but very “nationalistic”.
“We had to count every minute of French being spoken in order to meet the criteria. It was really rather complicated,” said the film maker, who declined to be named out of concern that her criticism could jeopardise access to future French funding.
Robert Tombs, professor of French history at St John’s College, Cambridge, described the rules as part of a wider and “rather absurd” protectionist mindset. “If the Dutch, the Maltese or the Danes are not worried about their languages disappearing, why should the French be?” he said.