Louis Leterrier

“French cinema has always been very interesting, and it's still very powerful. I think it goes to show that it's great to still have a cinema that doesn't try to emulate, for example, American cinema.”

“I talked to Marvel about 'Thor' at one point, but I didn't want to do Thor. It wasn't something I read growing up, really; it wasn't one of the books I loved.”

“I feel like the great filmmakers who have a true voice, yeah they take the notes, they understand the notes, but it's really about the notes underneath the notes. When you do a test screening and somebody says, 'Well, I didn't like the love story,' but it was probably just too long.”

“I think our movie, 'Now You See Me,' is an emotional movie rooted in smart and wits and fully amazing actors working perfectly together. It's like a supergroup of musicians.”

“It's funny, I started by making fake American movies, 'The Transporter' and stuff like that. I was shooting in France, but everything was in English. But then afterwards, I was looking at real French movies like the Jacques Audiard movies.”

“I'm one of the lucky directors that pretty much every movie I've done has started a franchise. But I never think this way. I think that's the way you break it, if you go, 'then at the end, at the end we'll see you later.' I was forced to do it in 'Clash of the Titans.'”

“Frankly, with HBO and Showtime and cable shows, the DVD box sets and all, you can have a product that doesn't make you feel like as soon as it's projected, it's thrown away. It's really a piece of art.”

“Great actors are so easy to direct. It's like they're big 747s that you just have to move left and right, and I don't really need to direct. I need to put them in the right costume, with the right haircut, in the right location, and with the right actor to act with. And then my job is almost done, with a great script, obviously.”

“My fear in converting it to 3-D is that people will say, 'Oh, it's the 3-D 'Clash of the Titans.' No, it's 'Clash of the Titans,' the movie, and then, on top of that, you have the 3-D conversion. The 2-D movie works as well as the 3-D movie. I want to make sure that people like the 2-D version.”

“I'm a 'Clash of the Titans'/'Star Wars' baby. I'm not a new 'Star Wars' baby. I'm not an 'Avatar' baby. That full CG doesn't work for me. I need interactivity. I need to feel the goo. I need to feel people coming out of animatronics and just interacting with props.”

“What's great about 'The Avengers' is that it's the next step. It's not just superhero fights super-villain and superhero wins. It's about superheroes that come together and interact. It's a clash of the egos. You could do 'Avengers 1' without a villain, just with all these guys coming together. They could sit down and just have a discussion.”

“When you do a first movie, you're contractually supposed to do the second one and then you don't do it, you become an executive producer. That's why there are a ton of directors who have executive producer credits on other movies.”

“Movies are not finished. They are abandoned. A movie is never finished.”

“It's true, I'm the youngest, highest-grossing French director. I have a few records, but no one knows or simply doesn't care. That's good, because I like that. Ultimately, I want to keep working, making a lot of movies, and get better at it. It's about finding great scripts and bringing them to life.”

“The new 'Avatar' BluRay is a lesson in filmmaking. It really is inspiring.”

“I love comedies, and I like sometimes comedies have a tendency to get a bit lazy. 'The Other Guys' was not lazy.”

“If I was to direct a movie about a super-confident guy, first of all I would hate that character. I can do a super-confident guy who crashes and burns and has to rebuild himself as somebody humble. But a super-confident guy that just gets more confident and gets the girl and the money and more success? That's not interesting.”

“I like the idea of a TV show. You take time to get to know your characters. You can introduce a lot of characters. You don't need your three-action set pieces that you usually need for movies.”

“I'm stuck somewhere a small island in the middle of the Atlantic where I'm alone. Because in France, they're like, 'No, you're not like us, you're not a French guy.' And in America, they're like, 'You're not like us.' I'm really alone in my little thing.”

“'Iron Man' was this fun, poppy thing bound to make a zillion dollars. And we were the other side of a superhero movie. More complex with The Hulk being this complex character - that's what it was.”