SCARLETT JOHANSSON Frees her Mind in LUCY

Portraying strong, unique female characters on the big screen is always a welcome challenge for Scarlett Johansson. So when casting his latest action-thriller “Lucy,” and writer-director Luc Besson needed to find an actress who could be believable as extremely vulnerable, as well as superpowered, when her exposure to an illicit substance inadvertently makes her acquire incredible skills, Johansson quickly came to mind.

Producer Virginie Besson-Silla describes the unlikely heroine of this story: “Lucy is an average girl who’s having fun with her friends in Asia, and there’s a lot of partying going on. She’s discovering life, but she’s going to discover it the hard way…and go much further than she would ever expect.”

For the role, Besson and his producer reached out to Scarlett Johansson, who has starred in intimate films such as “Lost in Translation” and “Her,” as well as action blockbusters including “Iron Man 2,” “The Avengers” and, most recently, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier.”

What "LUCY" Cast Says About Director LUC BESSON

A Luc Besson production looks like no other. That definitely has to do with the fact that the writer/director is deeply involved in every aspect of the shoot. And his latest action-thriller “Lucy” starring Scarlett Johansson, is no exception.

It's worth noting that Besson worked in every department of a film production before he became a full-fledged director. It wasn’t surprising therefore for fellow cast and crew to see Besson add fake blood on some extras or to touch up Johansson’s makeup, while he was at the camera.

Besson says that he has such a clear vision of the picture he is trying to achieve that he likes to have the camera with him most of the time: “I’m either at the camera, or I have the camera on my shoulder. I like to be very close to the actors. I’ve realized that, when you say, ‘Action,’ it’s like sticking a syringe in the actor’s arm. It’s an anesthetic. Between the moment, you say, ‘Action’ and ‘Cut,’ he’s on an anesthetic. He’s someone else. So I don’t want to break that. Sometimes in the middle of a line, I might say, ‘Okay, breathe. Do it again. Say it again. Go back to the beginning.’ I don’t cut because I want to get the most I can from the state the actor is in. They appreciate that because what’s difficult for them is to build up that pressure for ‘Action!’”

The cast members find the director’s approach both rewarding and demanding. Johansson was particularly taken with Besson’s directing style: “Luc has a very specific vision of how he wants each scene to look. That can be tough, but I appreciate that in a director. I appreciate the attention to detail and that unwillingness to settle for anything less. It can be exhausting, but in the end, I never left the set feeling, ‘I don’t know if we really got that.’ He’s emphatic about the fact that he settles for nothing less than perfect. And that’s great!”

Morgan Freeman, an Expert on Human Brain in "LUCY"

Universal Pictures' new mind-bending action thriller “Lucy” examines the possibility of what one human could truly do if she unlocked 100 percent of her brain capacity and accessed the furthest reaches of her mind.

As her abilities keep evolving, Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) reaches out to Professor Samuel Norman, an expert on the human brain, to try to understand what is happening to her. Soon after she is supercharged, she finds herself able to do anything from learning Chinese in an hour to beginning to control space and time.

The production was fortunate enough to have Academy Award® winner Morgan Freeman join the team as the world-renowned neurologist whose lifelong focus is how we access the information stored in our brain.

As Freeman is quite a science buff, and particularly enthusiastic about the mind’s capacity, the actor was a natural choice. Writer-director Luc Besson notes: “Morgan Freeman is the ultimate professor, for two reasons. First of all, he’s fascinated by the theory we develop in the movie because he’s very familiar with it, which I didn’t know before we met for the film. It was a pleasure for him just to talk about it. And secondly, he’s such a good actor that you believe everything he says.”

Producer Virginie Besson-Silla was also thrilled to see Freeman come aboard. “Morgan is one of the only people who could play God,” she enthuses. “So, to play the character of wisdom in the film, it was pretty obvious that he was the perfect actor.”

Freeman was equally excited to join the cast, admitting that he holds his character in high esteem. “Professor Norman has written about the brain for years,” he says. “He gives lectures all over the world and has been at the Sorbonne, in Paris, for a number of years. Because he’s preeminent in the field, he is tracked down by Lucy, who’s trying to figure out what’s going on with her brain.”

The veteran actor offers that Professor Norman is flattered to be contacted by Lucy: “When she calls him up and says, ‘I’ve read everything you wrote,’ he replies, ‘You can’t have.’ And when she starts quoting what he wrote, he says, ‘We’ve got to meet.”

Opening across the Philippines on August 06, “Lucy” is distributed by United International Pictures through Columbia Pictures.

LUC BESSON Merges Science with Fiction in the Action-Thriller LUCY

The human brain and its capabilities have long puzzled and deeply fascinated the most accomplished of scientists. While it has customarily been understood that we tap into much less of our mind’s capacity than we are capable of using, the exact percentage has remained uncertain…and ever fluctuating. With that arresting thought in mind, writer/director Luc Besson took the premise as a starting point for a storyline for his new film, the rip-roaring action-thriller “Lucy” starring Scarlett Johnsson.

Besson imagined what it would be like if we could access the furthest reaches of our brain, asking himself how that would affect our understanding of life…and our role in it. He pondered: “Would we have more control over ourselves and others?”

The result is the incredible story of Lucy (Johansson), a woman accidentally caught in a dark deal who turns the tables on her captors and transforms into a merciless warrior evolved beyond human logic

Besson was interested in the notion of having an “average girl,” as he puts it, develop superhuman mental and physical capabilities when her mind is unlocked. He surmises: “Lucy has problems, like anyone else, and she doesn’t know what to do with her life. Yet she’s going to reach the most ultimate knowledge in the universe.”

From ‘Bridesmaids’ to ‘Despicable Me 2’ Kristen Wiig shows her thousand faces and voices

The comedienne who brings life to Lucy is the same actor who played a pivotal role in Despicable Me.  The producers and directors were so delighted by Kristen Wiig’s work as Southern belle Miss Hattie, the acerbic orphanage matron in the first film, that they asked her back to play the female lead in this chapter.  Wiig explains how her participation in the project came about: “I was so happy that I was able to be in both films, and when I heard that they wanted me to play a different character in the second one, I was beyond thrilled that they would give me the opportunity.”