Trivia: When composer Éric Serra showed Inva Mula, the Albanian soprano who was going to sing the Diva Dance, the sheet music for that part, apparently she laughed and said that it was impossible for the human voice to switch from high to low notes that quickly. She got her way: The part that ended up in the film is not a single piece of audio, rather it's several pieces stitched meticulously together.
Trivia: When the priest states that he has a theory on the advancing planet near the beginning of the film, the president tells him that he has '20 seconds.' Cornelius gives his theory - which takes exactly 20 seconds.
Trivia: So much material was reportedly cut from the original script (which was hundreds of pages), that director Luc Besson and co-writer Robert Mark Kamen wanted to use the cut content as the basis for a sequel. However, according to Kamen, despite the film being profitable thanks to the international box office, the American box office was somewhat lower than expected, so the sequel was never made.
Trivia: The film was one of the first movies Sony released on the high-definition Blu-ray format in 2006. Unfortunately, the Blu-ray was considered a disaster due to a poor remaster that looked essentially indecipherable from the standard-def DVD. It was so widely hated that a year later, Sony released a replacement Blu-ray with a new HD remaster, and offered free copies to anyone who bought the original release. Thankfully this second Blu-ray was widely praised for its (much) better picture quality.
Trivia: The Diva Plavalaguna's name was used as an inside joke referencing Milla Jovovich's second film, "Return to Blue Lagoon" (plava laguna means "blue lagoon" in Serbo-Croatian).
Trivia: Korben Dallas and Zorg neither meet nor communicate in any way throughout the film.
Trivia: Luc Besson thought about the story when he was in high school.
Trivia: Zorg is told "you're a monster." Gary Oldman's characters have been told the same thing in "Air Force One" and "Lost in Space."
Trivia: In the movie, the bizarre Divine Language that Leeloo speaks was invented by Milla Jovovich and director Luc Besson. Milla Jovovich is multi-lingual, and by the end of filming the movie, the two of them had learned to speak it fluently, even engaging in full conversations in the language.
Trivia: Zorg's desk and the accident with the cherry is a reference to the film Tintin and the Lake of Sharks, where Rastapopoulos has the same kind of problem.
Trivia: Writer Robert Mark Kamen was brought in by the studio to help director Luc Besson with the script, which was hundreds of pages and contained numerous characters and subplots. Kamen took a meeting with Besson where he basically told him over and over that the script was unintelligible, angering Besson. Kamen thought he had burned the bridge, but to his surprise, Besson called him later and asked him to help rewrite the script. Kamen helped him condense it into a more acceptable length.
Trivia: During the opening credits, when the Earth rotates from the bottom of the screen to the left, listen carefully to the music. It is the same music played just after the Klingon ship goes back in time to 1986 in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (right after the heads of the Enterprise crew morph on screen).
Trivia: Director Luc Besson originally wanted musician Prince to play the part of Ruby Rhod. However, Prince turned down the part only because (despite his own peculiar fashion sense) he felt the costumes designed for the character were a little too strange and effeminate for his tastes.
Trivia: Gary Oldman did the movie as a favor to Luc Besson, who helped him raise money for another film he was trying to make. Oldman reportedly wasn't too keen on the film... in fact, he hated it and didn't understand why so many people found it appealing. When asked what he thought about it being a major cult-classic in an interview once, he simply laughed and said, "I know, I know... that's just the wacky world we live in!"
Trivia: Model and actress Maïwenn wasn't originally supposed to play the diva. However, for whatever reason, the original actress cast just... never showed up for filming. Since Maïwenn was married to director Luc Besson at the time and was around set, she was recruited to fill in for the part at the last minute.
Chosen answer: Not necessarily. Remember that the evil sped up once he knew Zorg was dead and the team had the stones. And we don't know how the Diva was going to get the stones out.
Greg Dwyer