The Hollywood Byte #51: Luc Besson

The men who collaborated on the sci-fi action film, The Fifth Element, have quietly toiled over the past five years creating the computer-generated feature, Arthur and the Invisibles. The film, and the PlayStation 2 and PC game from Atari, are based on the children's books from producer/director/writer Luc Besson (The Messenger, Unleashed).

Besson, who is producing the videogame adaptation of Eidos' Hitman, starring Timothy Olyphant, worked with Patrice Garcia, the artist who created all of the monsters and spaceships for The Fifth Element on both the Arthur film and game.

"One day he came to me with the drawing of a Minimoy and I fell in love with it," said Besson. "He wanted to do a short film for TV, and I said are you nuts. You can do a big, long story with that. You can do everything with this character."

While Besson crafted a script that would blend live action and 3D computer animation into a story based on his first two children's books in the series, Garcia created all of the CGI for the movie, including the Minimoys and their village.

"The videogame arrived very early in the process because I met someone from Atari and he had read the books and he loved Arthur," said Besson. "He bought the rights for the game because he really believed in the books and the film. Rather than just send the elements to the videogame team, we proposed to have them with us in the factory where they were making the film. The team of the videogame and the film lived together for three years in perfect harmony. It was a big help. That's probably what makes the game so good. They were at the heart of the process."

Besson said he was focused on the film, so he didn't interact with the videogame team except for when he might see them at lunch. He left them free to create the game, which he saw from time to time during its creation.