French prosecutors have dropped an investigation into claims that the film mogul Luc Besson raped actor Sand Van Roy, his lawyers said on Monday.

But the Paris prosecutor’s office said a new preliminary investigation was launched on 21 February after a different, unnamed woman reported an allegation of sexual assault.

Prosecutors dropped the rape investigation into allegations by Van Roy who told police in May that she had been repeatedly raped by Besson, 59, during an on-off relationship.

She is one of nine women who have said they were assaulted or harassed by the director and producer, whose 2017 space odyssey, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, was the most expensive European film ever made.

But his lawyers said that prosecutors had closed their inquiry into the alleged rapes, which Besson had always denied.

Besson “is sad that some people – a minority happily – were too quick to condemn him”, his lawyers said. They said the director “thanks all those others whose constant support has helped him get through these difficult months”.

Van Roy, a Dutch-Belgian actor who had relatively minor roles in Besson’s Taxi 5 and Valerian, had said she had been raped a total of four times but had feared for her career if she complained.

Besson had denounced the claims as “fantasist accusations”.

Van Roy’s allegations prompted eight other women to complain to the police or the French media about his behaviour. One actor claimed she had had to escape on “her hands and knees” from a casting in his Paris office in 2002.

The woman, in her 40s, who now lives in the US, wrote to prosecutors 10 days ago to say she wanted to formally add her testimony to the other complaints against him.

Besson’s representatives say he categorically denies any type of inappropriate or reprehensible behaviour.

• This article was amended on 1 March 2019 to remove an inaccurate description of Van Roy as an “ex-girlfriend” of Besson.