20 facts you might not know about 'The Fifth Element'

Imagine if somebody saw a thing you wrote when you were a teenager. It might be mortifying. Besson apparently had no such worries. He had actually begun writing what would become The Fifth Element as a bored teenager. He started on the script when he was 16, and it hit theaters when he was 38.

Hey, when you are working on a script from the time you are a teenager, there’s a chance it might get a little bloated. Besson first attempted to get The Fifth Element made back in 1991. At the time, the screenplay for the movie was a robust 400 pages. As the old adage goes, a page of script is roughly equal to a minute on screen.

While getting this 1991 production together, Besson met the French comic book artists Jean-Claude Mezieres and Jean Giraud, a.k.a. Moebius. The director liked their work, and he brought them on the project to handle production design. Meanwhile, he also hired polarizing French fashion designer Jean-Paul Gaultier for the costumes. Clearly, this was a big movie for guys named “Jean.”

With his production team coming together, Besson turned to finding somebody to play the lead role of Korben Dallas. He went to Mel Gibson, who turned him down. Besson also approached Bruce Willis, who was interested. However, he was hesitant, because the actor was coming off a couple of flops, and he considered The Fifth Element a bit risky.

Besson had a lot of pieces in place, but he and his producers didn’t have a film studio. They also couldn’t find one willing to give Besson the $100 million budget that he wanted. In 1992, the production halted, and everybody went their separate ways.

After The Fifth Element fell through, Besson made the movie Leon: The Professional in 1994. He was also working on shortening the script for The Fifth Element and attempting to lower the budget. Columbia had distributed Leon in the United States, and they agreed to finance this slimmed-down version of his sci-fi film.

The French director knew who he wanted for the villainous Zorg. Namely, the same guy who played the villain in Leon: Gary Oldman. Besson was a huge fan of Oldman, calling him “one of the top five actors in the world.”

When Besson got the green light from Columbia, he decided he wanted to go with a lesser-known actor as Korben in order to save some money. Then, one day, Besson was in a producer’s office when Willis called that producer up. Besson asked to speak to him, just to say hi, and he mentioned that he was going forward with The Fifth Element, though he was going to hire a lesser-known actor to save money. Willis said if he liked the script, maybe they could work something out. He did indeed like the script, and they did indeed work something out.

For the role of Leeloo, Besson met hundreds of actresses. He went with Jovovich. There was clearly something about her that he liked. While Besson was married when filming on The Fifth Element started — and his then-wife Maiwenn Le Besco had a role in the movie — he left his wife to start a romance with Jovovich. They two did get married, but they divorced in 1999.

For the “Divine Language” spoken by Leeloo, Besson decided to create his own fictional language. The language consists of roughly 400 words. Besson and Jovovich would talk and write letters in the language so Jovovich can practice. 

Ruby Rhod is definitely a showy part, and Besson had a showy person in mind. That would be Prince. In fact, Prince was even cast, but then he couldn’t shoot around his touring schedule. Chris Tucker and Jamie Foxx were both considered for the role, but Besson went with Tucker because, well, he had a smaller frame. Really.

Besson, a Frenchman, wanted to shoot The Fifth Element in France. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t make it work. Instead, he ended up shooting in London at the famous Pinewood Studios. For the scenes set in Egypt, they shot in the African country of Mauritania.

The director was tired of typical sci-fi films, which he felt were too drab and mostly took place in dimly lit spaceships. Maybe he had been watching Alien or something. Besson wanted a “cheerfully crazy” look for his movie, which is why he shot most of the action in daylight.

Gaultier had quite the budget for his costumes. There is one jacket in the movie that apparently cost $5,000 by itself. However, he was not phoning it in. Gaultier designed 900 costumes for the extras in the Fholston Paradise scenes, and he also personally checked the costumes every day during filming to make sure they were up to snuff.

Soprano opera singer Inva Mula dubbed the singing voice for the Diva, but she had to point something out to composer Eric Serra. Namely, the “Diva Dance” was impossible to be sung as it was written. Humans apparently can’t change notes that fast. As such, Mula sang the notes one at a time, and then they were digitally strung together to create the song.

A movie where the protagonist and antagonist never actually interact? Sometimes it happens. Willis finished shooting before Oldman began, and Korben Dallas and Zorg don’t share the screen for even a minute in The Fifth Element.

Gaumont, the French production company behind The Fifth Element, spared no expense for the movie’s premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 1997. The event didn’t just include a screening of the film, but also a “futuristic ballet,” a fashion show by Gaultier, and a fireworks display. Reportedly, they spent somewhere between $1 million and $3 million on the event.

The Fifth Element debuted atop the American box office, but it was a massive hit around the world. The movie made $263.9 million off of a budget of $90 million, with 75 percent of that coming from non-American markets. It was the biggest movie in France in 1997, unsurprisingly, and it was the highest-grossing French movie worldwide until 2011’s The Intouchables.

On the one hand, The Fifth Element was nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound Editing, and it won a BAFTA for Best Special Visual Effects. Plus, the Cesar Awards, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, nominated it for eight awards, and it won three of them, including Best Director. On the other hand, both Jovovich and Tucker were nominated for Razzies.

Willis has called making the movie “really fun.” Jovovich said Besson was the “first really amazing director I had worked with.” Yes, it seems like people enjoyed making The Fifth Element, other that Oldman, that is. In 2014, Oldman was asked his opinion on the movie. His response? “I can’t bear it.”