A major box office disappointment is experiencing a small reprieve on the Max streaming service after its disastrous 2017 debut. “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” was written and directed by Luc Besson, and is an adaptation of the French comic series “Valérian and Laureline,” by writer Pierre Christin and illustrator Jean-Claude Mézières. It stars Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne as special operatives tasked with maintaining order throughout space for the human race. While there is plenty of sci-fi spectacle on display in “Valerian,” there’s also a love story at the heart of the film, with Valerian chasing his sidekick despite her consistent refusal to indulge his romantic desires. After the pair are dispatched to the intergalactic city of Alpha, they uncover a dark threat to the city and must work together to save both Alpha and the rest of the universe.

Clearly a passion project for Besson, who had loved the “Valérian and Laureline” comic since he was a kid, the film ultimately proved to be nothing short of a disaster, both critically and commercially. Besson’s own EuropaCorp studio also helped finance the film, which became the most expensive independently financed film ever made with a budget of $180 million and an expensive sci-fi flop. The director also fully immersed himself in the project, creating 6,000 drawings, a 100-page bible solely about the city of Alpha, and overseeing more than 2,734 VFX shots.

It’s a real shame, then, that the movie — which needed to make at least $400 million globally to make any sort of profit — made just $215 million at the global box office. Besson, who previously oversaw “The Fifth Element,” had seemingly proven his sci-fi bonafides by the time he came to direct “Valerian,” but his passion project just didn’t pan out. It will surely be little consolation to Besson, but immediately after one of 2024’s worst horror movies became a streaming hit on Max, his film is now climbing the streamer’s charts almost a decade after it first bowed in theaters.

“Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” arrived on Max on January 17, 2025, and though it took a few days to chart, the film looks to be making a decent run up the streamer’s most-watched rankings. According to FlixPatrol, a site that tracks and aggregates streaming viewership data across various platforms, “Valerian” debuted at number 10 on the Max film charts on January 24, 2025. The following day it hit number five, suggesting the sci-fi actioner could continue its run and perhaps even take the top spot next week.

That said, this is only the chart for the U.S. Worldwide, “Valerian” isn’t streaming on the Max service, so for now this is an American renaissance for the movie, which only made $40 million stateside back in 2017. Still, if the film can continue its trajectory, it will be a nice little win for a film that Luc Besson clearly put a lot of effort into. For “Valerian” to make it to the number one spot, however, it will have to overcome an interesting assortment of other films currently occupying the U.S. Max film charts.

“Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” might be proving popular with streaming audiences but with a 47% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, it certainly didn’t prove popular upon its debut. That rating is based on 297 reviews, too, which makes it all the more convincing — though it should be noted that Rotten Tomatoes is the site that maintains there are only two “perfect” sci-fi movies ever made. “Valerian” also has an average rating of 5.4 out of 10 and the audience score isn’t much better, either, at 53%.

Still, Max viewers are clearly seeing something in Luc Besson’s forgotten sci-fi flop, which either suggests there’s something in the movie that audiences and critics overlooked back in 2017 or, as the 2023 streaming success of “The Snowman” showed, steaming viewers will watch anything.

Meanwhile, “Valerian” has an uphill battle to make it to the top of the U.S. MAX charts, with the brilliant, pitch-black oddity that is the Sebastian Stan-starring “A Different Man” currently occupying the top spot stateside, as per the FlixPatrol Top 10. That being one of the best films of 2024 makes this a particularly big challenge for “Valerian,” though it shouldn’t have much trouble toppling the current number two film, “Keeping Up with The Joneses.”