Taken

Pierre Morel's Taken was produced by Luc Besson's EuropaCorp at Cité du Cinéma outside Paris. Besson and Robert Mark Kamen wrote the screenplay, and Morel, who had previously directed Besson's District 13, directed. Despite its English-language script and largely American framing, it is technically a French production, and it was nominated for Best Sound at the César Awards in 2009.

Its release is a textbook case of an unexpected international box-office breakout. It opened modestly in France in early 2008 and reached the United States in late January 2009, a slot usually treated as a dumping ground for genre films, then grossed over $226 million worldwide on a budget of about $25 million. It also remade Liam Neeson's career. Until then he was known mainly as a dramatic actor (Schindler's List, Michael Collins, Kinsey); for the seventeen years since, he has been a late-career action lead.

Two sequels followed, Taken 2 in 2012 and Taken 3 in 2014, both directed by Olivier Megaton, and a 2017 NBC series with Clive Standen as a younger version of Neeson's character ran for two seasons. The franchise has grossed over $930 million worldwide. Morel, having shown that the EuropaCorp action template worked at scale, went on to direct From Paris with Love, The Gunman and Peppermint in much the same action-thriller register.