Now that I think about it, there is indeed a long tradition in France for sci-fi, fantasy and action/adventure novels.Also, I'm just going to drop here some wikipedia articles about some internationam movements/genres that may be relevant to this thread:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giallo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luchador_films
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastique
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantaserye_and_telefantasya
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xianxia_novel
Do you guys think any of these things have potential? How to make them popular?
This tradition spread to the comics and some of them were adapted in movies or video games (I can think of Michel Vaillant, Valerian, XIII, Blueberry, Enki Bilal's work).
French cultural scene often rewarded a kind of elitist self-centered image. What you would need is an early (or several) Luc Besson, which could focus his/their work to appeal to a more popular audience, wider than just french one.
Though I don't know who could fit for this role nor how that person could achieve it.