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.

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.”

Producer Virginie Besson-Silla, who has worked with Besson on three previous films reveals that the writer/director actually tinkered with the concept 10 years ago: “The basis of the story was there, but I don’t think Luc was quite ready. I believe he wanted to let it mature.” She pauses, “So he took all those years to finally come back to it.”

Although Besson believed that the idea of expanding one’s brain capacities made for tremendous action-thriller material, he was particularly intent on grounding—at least in part—“Lucy” in scientific fact. The filmmaker offers: “After I met with a few scientists, I was amazed by what they told me: about cancer, about cells, about the fact that we have hundreds of billions of cells that communicate with one another. Apparently, each cell sends out something like 1,000 signals per second. The Web is nothing compared to that. It took me a few years to find the right balance between what is real and what is fantasy.”

As he delved further into the concept, Besson reached out to a number of scientists, including world-renowned neurologist Yves Agid, who co-founded the Brain & Spine Institute (ICM) that is based at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, of which Besson is a founding member. Agid remembers the conversation he had with Besson about a story that was “a combination of fact and fiction.” He says: “When Luc told me about the screenplay, I found it extraordinary. Still, I had to rein in his creativity a bit with facts, which was easy in the end, because he understands everything so quickly.”

As the neurologist helped Besson walk the line between theoretical reality and imagination, he began to see that creativity for a filmmaker is not dissimilar to the skills needed to work as a scientist. Agid says: “That’s what I find splendid in the film: There are true facts. For instance, Lucy deals with the number of cells in the brain, the number of signals per second produced by one cell, etc. By taking advantage of all these figures, Luc implements a fascinating dynamic throughout the film. Of course, the more Lucy advances through the movie, the more the story becomes fictional, which I find extremely robust. When you see the film, you believe it. It grabs you because it is grounded, to some extent, in reality.”

Besson walks us through the research that informed his ultimate story: “There’s a combination of factors that make this possible, involving really bad people and a new kind of drug. Well, actually, it’s not exactly a drug. In fact, it’s a natural substance that pregnant women produce in the sixth week of natal development called CPH4. I came up with this idea, which according to some doctors I spoke with, is not entirely illogical. At some point, when you open up the capacity of your brain, if you can access 20 percent, you can open 30 percent. When you reach 30 percent, you can open 40 percent, and so on. It’s a domino effect. So Lucy is colonizing her own brain, and she can’t stop it. She doesn’t want it, and she doesn’t even know what to do with it.”

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

From “La Femme Nikita” and “The Professional” to “The Fifth Element,” writer/director Luc Besson has created some of the toughest, most memorable female action heroes in recent cinematic history. Now, Besson directs Scarlett Johansson and Academy Award® winner Morgan Freeman in Universal Pictures’ “Lucy,” an action-thriller that 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.

It has long been hypothesized that human beings only use a small percentage of our cerebral capacity at any given time. For centuries, speculative science has postulated what would occur if mankind could actually evolve past that limit. Indeed, what would happen to our consciousness and newfound abilities if every region of the brain was concurrently active? If each one of the 86 billion densely packed neurons in a human brain fired at once, could that person become, in fact, superhuman?

In Besson’s story, we meet Lucy (Johansson), a carefree young student living in Taiwan who is tricked by her boyfriend into delivering a briefcase to a business contact. Before she can even comprehend the situation in which she’s become ensnared, Lucy is grabbed and held hostage by the merciless Mr. Jang (Choi Min Sik of “Oldboy,” “Lady Vengeance”).

When his thugs surgically implant in our heroine a package loaded with a powerful synthetic substance—one that would likely kill her if it were to leak—her terror turns to desperation. Alongside a handful of fellow unwilling hosts, she is sent to the airport with the objective of flying across the world as a transport vessel for material that is priceless to her kidnappers.

When the chemical is accidentally unleashed in and absorbed by Lucy’s system, her body begins the unimaginable: her cerebral capacity is unlocked to startling, and previously hypothetical, levels. As she attempts to comprehend and incorporate the incredible changes in her mind and body, Lucy begins to feel everything around her—space, air, vibrations, people, even gravity—and develop superhuman traits including telepathy, telekinesis, expanded knowledge and breathtaking control over matter.

While the substance continues to awaken and unlock every dormant corner of her mind, Lucy races across the planet to enlist the help of Professor Samuel Norman (Freeman), whose decades of research on the brain’s potential makes him unparalleled in the field…and the only person on Earth with the ability to see where this might lead.

Aiding Lucy in her quest to reach Dr. Norman is French police Capt. Pierre Del Rio (Amr Waked of “Syriana”), a dispassionate officer who commands his bureau. Although disturbed by Lucy’s seemingly inhuman powers—ones that are growing by the minute—Del Rio would sacrifice his own life to protect the young woman who looks to him to retain the last vestiges of her humanity.

Relentlessly pursued by her former captors, who will kill anyone to extract their product from the woman who has become their biggest adversary, Lucy begins to turn the tables and transform into a warrior evolved beyond human logic.

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

Universal Pictures has recently released the teaser images, including an international poster, of its upcoming action-thriller “Lucy” starring Scarlett Johansson.

From "La Femme Nikita" and "The Professional" to "The Fifth Element," writer/director Luc Besson has created some of the toughest, most memorable female action heroes in cinematic history.

Now, Besson directs Scarlett Johansson in Universal Pictures' "Lucy," an action-thriller that tracks 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. The film also stars Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman.

Opening across the Philippines on August 20, “Lucy” is distributed by United International Pictures through Columbia Pictures.