Luc Besson has added another cast member to his passion project, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Saturday night on Instagram, Besson posted, “Ethan Hawke will play in #Valerian! I want to work with for years! We gonna have fun!”

As of yet, it has not been announced what character Hawke will play. He joins already announced cast members Dane DeHaan (Chronicle, Amazing Spider-Man 2), Cara Delevingne (Suicide Squad), Colin Firth (Kingsman: The Secret Service), and Rihanna (very famous pop star).

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is based on the French graphic novel Valerian and Laureline which debuted in 1967. It tells the story of two “spatio-temporal” agents as they travel through space and time, protecting the universe and discovering new planets and alien races. For those Doctor Who fans out there, think of Captain Jack Harkness when he was a time agent, but didn’t quit to become a con man. DeHaan and Delevingne will play Valerian and Laureline, respectively.

Besson has been working on this project for years. He had a script ready to go, but scrapped it and started over once he saw James Cameron’s Avatar. He wanted his Valerian to be something groundbreaking, like he thought Avatar was.

This will be another in a line of Besson’s funky science fiction projects. He directed the extra-weird Lucy with Scarlett Johansson in 2014 and he’s beloved for having directed Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich in 1997’s The Fifth Element. According to Deadline, Valerian will have almost 2400 special effects shots, as opposed to the 180 from Fifth Element.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is currently scheduled for release on July 21, 2017.

So what do you think? Are you a fan of The Fifth Element, and excited to see what Besson has in store? Let me know on Twitter or sound off in the comments below.

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HT: Deadline

IMAGE: Wikimedia Commons