We Know How 'Valerian' Got Made--But Not Why It Failed

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets flopped. At least that's the way things look after the opening weekend of the Luc Besson-written and -directed sci-fi film: It headed into Monday with just about $17 million in receipts and a splattery 54 percent on Rotten Tomatoes (and a better audience score of 60 percent, to be fair). Now, I spent bits and pieces of the last two years working on a print feature about Besson and Valerian. But it wasn't exactly about the film itself; by the time I had put my story to bed, I'd only seen about 20 minutes of the actual movie. This is a not-so-secret secret of print magazine features: The lead time of monthly magazines like WIRED means that the journalism is often done before the film.