Luc Besson's thriller "Lucy" starring Scarlett Johansson has taken the global market by storm, becoming the most successful French film abroad in 20 years, movie agency UniFrance announced Friday.
The sci-fi film about a woman who becomes superhuman by using 100 percent of her brain has sold 57.3 million tickets throughout the world, and has just come out in China where it drew nearly six million people to movie theatres in just 10 days.
Directed by Besson, it was produced by the French filmmaker's EuropaCorp company.
UniFrance, which promotes French cinema abroad, started compiling statistics about the popularity of Gallic films on the global market in 1994, and as such "Lucy" has had the most success since the organisation began this process.
The previous record of popularity had been held by "Taken 2", a thriller starring Liam Neeson and directed by Olivier Megaton -- which like "Lucy" is a French anglophone film and a EuropaCorp production.
Besson's "The Fifth Element" also had roaring success as did the French-language "Untouchable", about a wealthy quadriplegic man who hires a young man from a council estate to be his caretaker.