Richard Kelly's next
Source: JoBlo.com
I'm not sure if this has already been posted elsewhere, but whatever the case, allow me to write it up here anyway, as DONNIE DARKO director Richard Kelly officially announced his next directing gig at the San Diego Comic Con on Friday, and it will be a film called THE BOX. At some point in the project's development, HOSTEL director Eli Roth was going to direct that movie, but since he's doing HOSTEL 2 now (and most likely, Stephen King's CELL after that), he told Kelly to take the lead, and Kelly agreed (seems like the two co-wrote the screenplay together). The film takes place in 1976 and is based on the Richard Matheson short story. According to the IMDB, the film's plotline goes something like this: "A small wooden box arrives on the doorstep of a troubled married couple, who open it and become instantly wealthy. Little do they realize that opening the box also kills someone they do not know." Sounds cool. Kelly said that he was hoping for a "change of pace" with this film, and that he would likely be filming it in his own hometown of Richmond, Virginia.
Cameron Diaz Playing With Richard Kelly's Box
Source: Variety
June 28, 2007
Media Rights Capital has set Cameron Diaz to star in The Box, a PG-13 horror film that will be directed by Donnie Darko helmer Richard Kelly.
Variety says that Kelly wrote the script based on a Richard Matheson short story. Production will begin in the fall.
The film will cost north of $30 million and Media Rights Capital is committed to bankroll the entire film, as it did with Babel and Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno.
Based on the Richard Matheson short story "Button, Button," the film casts Diaz as a young woman who is given a mysterious box by a stranger. She's told that certain things will happen depending on which buttons she presses.
Kelly and Sean McKittrick will produce and Ted Hamm will be
executive producer.
"My hope is to make a film that is incredibly suspenseful and broadly commercial, while still retaining my artistic sensibility,"
Cameron Diaz In A Thriller? A Look At 'The Box' That Could Change Her Career
'Donnie Darko' director Richard Kelly sets out to make an old-fashioned suspense flick with the perennially perky star.
Source: MTV
You're given a box, inside of which is a small button. Every time you press the button you get a package with a varying amount of cash — untraceable and large enough to change your life. You'll never have to work again. Owning this box is like being able to win the lottery anytime you want.
Do you press the button?
What if every time you pressed the button, someone died? It's not someone you know, or someone you would have ever met. Chances are, you might reason, this person had it coming. Maybe they deserved to die. Maybe you're not the one who did it, but you'll never know. All you know is that someone, somewhere is now dead. Do you still press the button?
More pertinently, asks director Richard Kelly — would Cameron Diaz?
"It brings up a lot of ethical questions and moral dilemmas," Kelly said of the setup for his new film, "The Box," in which Diaz will star as a married woman (and, for the first time, a mother) who receives just such a package. "I think we found kind of a classic triggering mechanism for suspense."
With her 1,000-watt smile and cockeyed grace, Diaz is a study in serendipity, an actress whose characters are always a little klutzy, a tad bumbling, and yet good things always seem to come elegantly to them in the end.
But Kelly just can't wait to wipe that smile off of Diaz's face. "I want to make audiences see her in a different way, a way they've never had a chance to before," the "Donnie Darko" director told MTV News. "I think of Kim Novak or Grace Kelly — all the great actresses who worked with Alfred Hitchcock. I'm hoping that with Cameron we can do something [similarly] special."
He's certainly got the material. Based on a short story by Richard Matheson (author of "I Am Legend"), "The Box" is an old-fashioned suspense film that Kelly calls a "psychological thriller where what's frightening lies in the unknown" — and what's frighteningly unknowable isn't the nature of the box but the nature of those who use it.
"What does the button represent?" he asked. "We push a button to elect someone or push a button to drop a bunch of bombs on a country. Ultimately, I thought it was this incredible metaphor for responsibility, free will, and cause and effect."
In that sense, he said, the box becomes a projection of our own inner demons, representing something different to each person it comes to. Which, according to Kelly, makes the movie a throwback in another sense as well.
"It's definitely an intimate film," said Kelly, who directed Justin Timberlake, Mandy Moore, Sarah Michelle Gellar and The Rock in the upcoming "Southland Tales". "It's not about gore, and it's not about a lot of blood or language or violence. It's sort of a horror or suspense film that my mother would still go see."
The short story is available online (it's about six pages long) and was previously adapted into an episode of "The Twilight Zone" in 1986. Though Kelly's ending is different, he promised the feature length version won't be an update — instead, it takes place in 1976.
"It's a film that needed to take place in the past for a lot of reasons I can't completely reveal without spoiling things, but doing it in 1976 makes it a lot simpler in a way," he contended. "In 1976 there wasn't the Internet; there weren't cell phones and Blackberrys."
The flick starts production in November in Kelly's hometown of Richmond, Virginia.
In a world of genuine ethical dilemnas, why make this movie about an imaginary box and a button?
The best answer would probably be to use that box and button as a metaphor, which Kelly does bring up.
So, then, the question becomes, why make it a stupid metaphor? It's not that the box and button is an inherhantly stupid idea, but if it is to represent "responsibility, free will, and cause and effect," and made analogous to voting and bombing countries, if not actually in the movie then at least in the director's speeches, then it sure strikes me as stupid.
The money box that kills people brings up no real ethical question or moral dilemna. There's a fairly clear right and wrong there.
Somehow, I suspect the writer/director of Donnie Darko isn't going to be making a philosophically serious movie here. But it seems like he's already starting on the road to claiming it as such.
EDIT: I want to specify that I don't think the short story is necessarily stupid. It's probably fairly neat. I just think that the movie seems like a bad idea.
1976 kind of makes me giddy!
Scott in talks to enter Kelly's Box
Source: Reelz Channel
After Southland Tales debuted to a decidedly negative reception last year at Cannes, Richard Kelly's long-awaited sophomore project was plagued by rumors that the film might never see the light of day in the U.S. Thankfully, Sony finally put the speculation to rest last month when they announced that Southland Tales will open November 9th, with a running time considerably shorter than the 180 minute behemoth screened at Cannes.
Kelly's apparent sophomore jinx hasn't done anything to sully his reputation in Hollywood. The Donnie Darko director is already hard at work on his third project, the horror flick The Box, with Cameron Diaz set to star. And now it appears like Southland Tales star Seann William Scott might be coming aboard as well.
In an exclusive interview with ReelzChannel.com, the Dukes of Hazzard star (lest we forget) revealed yesterday that he's currently in talks to join the cast of The Box, though details have yet to be ironed out. Scott describes Kelly's third film as "interesting and weird. It's gonna be a movie that people either love or hate. And I kinda like those films."
An interesting and weird Richard Kelly film? Imagine that.
Scott's latest movie, Mr. Woodcock, opens September 14th.
Frank Langella to star in Kelly's 'Box'
Actor joins Cameron Diaz in horror film
Source: Variety
Frank Langella will star with Cameron Diaz in "The Box," a horror film to be directed by "Donnie Darko" helmer Richard Kelly.
The $30 million production is being bankrolled by Media Rights Capital.
Langella will play a stranger who presents a mysterious box to a woman.
Kelly wrote the script based on Richard Matheson short story "Button, Button" He is producing with Sean McKittrick of his Darko Entertainment shingle. Ted Hamm will be exec producer.
Pic starts shooting mid-November (Daily Variety, June 29). By then Langella will have wrapped the film version of "Frost/Nixon" for Imagine and director Ron Howard.
Langella won the Tony award for his work in "Frost/Nixon" on Broadway. In November, Roadside Attractions will release Langella's "Starting Out in the Evening" which played at Sundance and Toronto.
MRC, which pays star salaries along with partial copyright ownership that gives talent a DVD windfall, also bankrolled "Babel" and Sacha Baron Cohen's "Bruno."
Kelly's Box Is '70s Piece
Source: Sci-Fi Wire
Richard Kelly—who will direct The Box, based on a short story by SF author Richard Matheson—told SCI FI Wire that the movie will be a period piece, set in 1976, around the time the original story was written.
"It's a six-page short story written by Richard Matheson," Kelly (Donnie Darko) said in an interview while promoting his upcoming epic SF movie, Southland Tales. "With a six-page short story, it's just a wonderful premise that ... I'm taking and I'm expanding upon. And the film takes place in 1976, which is very near the time in which the original short story was written, so it is a period piece."
Why the 1970s? "It has to do with the concept of the film working in a more innocent, less technology-dependent world," Kelly said. "And the concept, I feel, does not work as well in the world of [the] Internet, Blackberries and constant hand-held communication and technology."
The movie stars Cameron Diaz and Frank Langella in a story about a couple who receive a mysterious box that will grant them a million dollars, but with a catch: "The catch is, somewhere, someone in the world they do not know will die," Kelly said.
Kelly is casting the film's other roles and is in preproduction. "Sets are being built," he said. "We start shooting in Boston on Nov. 17. ... Right now, the only cast that's been announced is Cameron Diaz and Frank Langella. But there will be some other announcements very shortly."
Kelly said that he's had his eye on the story for years. "It's a very primal piece of mythology," he said. "And Matheson, I've been obsessed with the story for years, and I've been trying to figure out how to expand it into a film."
Interestingly, Kelly said he sold the movie to Sony Pictures Entertainment at the Cannes Film Festival—the very festival where Southland Tales got an early screening, to disastrous critical reception. (The movie has since been recut, with visual-effects shots added to clarify the narrative.)
"It was funny. I was at the Cannes Film Festival, on a yacht, and we finally sold the movie [The Box] to Sony," Kelly recalled. "And it our first piece of good news at the festival [laughs], and we're like, 'Hallelujah! A huge movie studio bought our movie!'"
Kelly added that he came up with a storyline to expand the slim short story. "I figured it out," he said. "I figured out how to solve it, after four years of trying to crack it, and I went home after Cannes, as we were editing, and started writing the script. I've been rewriting it ever since. And I just finished the last rewrite the day before the maybe writers' strike, and we start shooting in about three weeks." Southland Tales opens in limited release on Nov. 14.
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Marsden enwrapped in 'Box' role
Source: Hollywood Reporter
James Marsden is in final negotiations to star opposite Cameron Diaz in helmer Richard Kelly's horror film "The Box."
Marsden and Diaz will play an unhappily married couple who receive a box from a stranger who tells them that if they push a button on the box, they'll receive a hefty amount of cash -- and someone they don't know will die.
Kelly adapted the $30 million Media Rights Capital production from the Richard Matheson short story "Button, Button," first published in Playboy in 1970. Matheson adapted the story for an episode of CBS' mid-'80s revival of "The Twilight Zone."
Marsden also is in talks to appear in a cameo role in Sean Anders' comedy "Sex Drive," playing the brother of a horny teen (Josh Zuckerman) who drives cross-country to lose his virginity to a girl he meets online.
Landing the lead opposite Diaz is the latest breakthrough for Marsden, who first caught the public's attention in the "X-Men" trilogy. After roles in "Hairspray" and "Superman Returns," he nabbed the lead opposite Katherine Heigl in the upcoming romantic comedy "27 Dresses."
Richard Kelly Talks About The Box
Source: ShockTilYouDrop
Mr. 'Donnie Darko himself,' Richard Kelly was in Los Angeles to promote his newest film, Southland Tales. The film is a wild look at a post-apocalyptic world, starring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Seann William Scott.
The talk subtly changed to Richard's next project, the horror The Box – that stars Cameron Diaz and Frank Langella.
Richard describes the flick as trying to move away from his past styles and change it up a little. But don't worry, he's not switching it around too much. "I'm really trying to make a really, really thrilling, suspenseful, edge-of-your-seat film and there's a great fun in that for me. The Box is still in my crazy wheel house, but I'm deliberately trying to see if I can make a film that is very easy for a studio to release on 3,000 screens at once, as opposed to platforming it and waiting to see how the public digests it."
Richard couldn't give too much away from the storyline, other than to say what they main beginning of the plot is. "It's a very simple six-page short story about a married couple who receives this button unit. There's a glass dome on it, and a key that unlocks the button; if they push the button, someone they don't know in the world will die – but they'll receive this amount of money. For me, that was always this great first act for this film. And what we've been spending a lot of time engineering is what happens next – what's the payoff, what comes after that."
Cameron is playing the wife; when rumors of James Marsden getting the role of the husband came up, Richard quickly shot them down. "I can't say who's playing the husband right now, cause it's still – the deal's being ironed out. I know there's been speculation, but it's kind of been a complicated situation."
Richard starts shooting The Box on November 17th, with a 2008 release attached. Southland Tales hits theaters November 14th.
Kelly Wraps The Box
Source: SciFi Wire
Director Richard Kelly wrote on his MySpace.com blog that he has wrapped production on The Box, his upcoming film adaptation of a Richard Matheson SF short story.
"I haven't blogged in a long time because, well, ... I've been in Boston/Virginia directing my third movie!" Kelly wrote. "And now I am back in L.A., and we have officially wrapped production on The Box."
The movie stars Cameron Diaz, James Marsden and Frank Langella in a story about a couple who receive a mysterious device that grants wishes--but at the cost of a human life.
"My editors have been working nonstop, and we are beginning to work on the visual effects, signing a composer, etc.," Kelly said. "As soon as Warner Brothers gives us a release date, I will let you know."
Kelly added that the DVD for his last movie, the apocalyptic SF movie Southland Tales, comes out March 18.
He seems to really be making this one completely inside Hollywood. Let's see how it turns out, but my guess is that's it's going to make some decent money and next he'll make another one of his strange movies in "one for me, one for them" fashion.
That is a good band. Too bad Kelly lost my respect when he worked 5 years in that POS SOUTHLAND.
Too bad the "Donnie Darko Dude"....
at this point Kelly should just legally change his name to Donnie Darko
When are we gonna have a will it/won't it suck poll for this thread?
Whenever another filmmaker does something out of the box, I ask myself, would PTA do this? The answer is no. PTA would not work with Arcade Fire. He'd probably go to their show and check them out but involve them in his filmmaking? Not a chance. He'd work with someone like Brion, Greenwood, or someone new who fits his extremely creative style like Andrew Bird. Arcade Fire are good and I'm a fan, but they aren't the type of band you should be aligning yourself with when making a movie.
Donnie Darko dude is a hack anyways.
I like your criteria.
Though, saying he'd work with Andrew Bird seems as speculative as saying he wouldn't work with Arcade Fire.
He was the first musician who came to mind when trying to think of someone really creative and multi-talented.
now what, Donnie Darko Dude? better look to your WW(ouldn't)PTAD bracelet.
Richard Kelly's The Box Gets Release Date
Source:Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. has marked March 20, 2009 as a release date for Richard Kelly's The Box, a feature adaptation of the Richard Matheson story "Button, Button." Starring Cameron Diaz, Frank Langella and James Marsden, Kelly's film tells of Norma and Arthur Lewis who are faced with a terrible dilemma when a mysterious glass box turns up at their door. If they press the button inside the box, they'll get enough money to save their ailing son, but in exchange, someone, somewhere in the world will die. When the temptation to save their beloved son becomes too much to bear, Norma pushes the button. Immediately, a gunshot rings out somewhere nearby. Consumed with guilt, Norma must do everything in her power to solve a murder she has knowingly caused.
The Box Delayed Until September 2009
Source: Cinema Blend
Movie geeks anxious to meet Southland Tales and Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly at this summer's Comic Con will have to hold their horses. Collider.com is reporting that Kelly's next movie, The Box, has been pushed back to a September 2009 release date, instead of February 2009 as planned. That means that a big promotional push at July's Comic Con would be a waste, and anything Warner Bros. has up their sleeve will probably happen at next summer's Con.
More importantly, of course, this means that those awaiting Kelly's next film will have to wait even longer to wash the taste of Southland Tales out of their mouths. The new date for the film is supposedly September 11, 2009. Now don't get all worked up—that's a Friday, and hey, some movie has to come out that day. But it's not necessarily a good sign for a director who really needs to get back in Hollywood's good graces. The Box, starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, has been finished for a while now, and its plot about a mystical box that causes murders seems like a good fit for the January-February time frame, which has been kind to thrillers like Cloverfield and The Messengers. If Warner Bros. thought they had something worthy on their hands, it seems like they would have stuck with the original plan.
Collider also reported that test screenings of the movie are being planned in the Los Angeles area, and they predict that word will leak out soon enough on whether or not the movie is a stinker. If the buzz isn't great, though, this could be the beginning of a negative campaign that could sink The Box as effectively as Southland Tales was torpedoed last fall. Richard Kelly sure needs a break, and this doesn't look like it's going to be it.
Quote from: MacGuffin on June 25, 2008, 10:32:50 AM
The new date for the film is supposedly September 11, 2009. Now don't get all worked up—that's a Friday, and hey, some movie has to come out that day.
hahahah this movie is already doomed.
Richard Kelly's Box Moves Again
Source: ShockTilYouDrop
Warner Bros. has shifted The Box, the latest thriller from Donnie Darko helmer Richard Kelly, from March to November 6, 2009. This is yet another release date change for the Cameron Diaz vehicle which is based on the Richard Matheson story "Button, Button."
The official synopsis goes: Norma and Arthur Lewis are faced with a terrible dilemma when a mysterious glass box turns up at their door. If they press the button inside the box, they'll get enough money to save their ailing son, but in exchange, someone, somewhere in the world will die. When the temptation to save their beloved son becomes too much to bear, Norma pushes the button. Immediately, a gunshot rings out somewhere nearby. Consumed with guilt, Norma must do everything in her power to solve a murder she has knowingly caused.
Frank Langella and James Marsden also star.
Wow, Richard Kelly is a disaster.
Kelly's gift for trivializing really serious ideas to death is rivaled only by Paul Haggis. why haven't those two collaborated yet?
Confirmed: Arcade Fire Scoring Richard Kelly's 'The Box'
Source: Cinematical
Well, now I just feel silly -- thanks a lot, Win Butler. Back in May, rumors began to circulate that Arcade Fire members Butler, Regine Chassagne and Owen Pallet were working on the score for Richard Kelly's The Box, but Butler had insisted there was nothing to those rumors. Now it's eight months later, and as it turns out he was just messing with us. In an interview with Pitchfork, Butler finally fessed up that he had been working with Kelly on the orchestral score for the Twilight Zone-inspired drama. He says, "We didn't really think we were going to do the whole thing, and then it just kind of was easier once we got in. It was like, 'Oh well, we'll just keep going.' It has so much to do with the editing, and your job is just to help the director. It's a very different experience."
Kelly's follow-up to Southland Tales is based on Richard Matheson's short story, Button, Button, and centers on a couple who come into possession of a mysterious box that can make all their financial dreams come true. But there's a catch: if they use the box, an innocent person will die (I can almost hear Rod Serling in the background telling me to "Picture a couple..."). The film stars Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as the husband and wife with financial woes, and Frank Langella as the box's strange 'delivery man'. It's a pretty creepy premise that would appear to be a perfect fit for the music of Arcade fire ... and Kelly's own twisted sensibilities.
Back in November, James brought us the news that the film had been pushed back for a second time from March to November 6, 2009. Hopefully the delays aren't signs of another troubled production for Kelly.
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/node/148217
I'm gonna dial into The Box and request Thuggish Ruggish Bone.
I had forgotten about this shit and it was OK.
Quote from: MacGuffin on January 07, 2009, 04:50:08 PM
(I can almost hear Rod Serling in the background telling me to "Picture a couple...")
Except this episode was on the 1980s Twilight Zone... not the Serlings
Where is Kelly's Box Going Now?
Source: ShockTillYouDrop
Richard Kelly's The Box is moving from a November 6th release to November 25th. This comes after flirting with an early debut this year before moving to November. Cameron Diaz, Frank Langella and James Marsden star.
Synospsis: Norma and Arthur Lewis are faced with a terrible dilemma when a mysterious glass box turns up at their door. If they press the button inside the box, they'll get enough money to save their ailing son, but in exchange, someone, somewhere in the world will die. When the temptation to save their beloved son becomes too much to bear, Norma pushes the button. Immediately, a gunshot rings out somewhere nearby. Consumed with guilt, Norma must do everything in her power to solve a murder she has knowingly caused.
Every time I read this plot I think of this as one of those terrible TV movies you never see...
Richard Kelly says The Box is finished and ready for October
Source: SciFi Wire
Director Richard Kelly wrote on his MySpace page that his upcoming sci-fi movie The Box is completely finished and ready for its Oct. 30 release date.
"The release date has been shuffling around a bit, but this is common with studios, and everyone feels like this is the best date for the film," Kelly posted last week. Based on the 1970 short story "Button, Button" by Richard Matheson, the film is written and directed by Kelly and stars Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as a couple who receive a box with a mysterious power.
In other updates, Kelly wrote:
♦"The film is completely finished. Principal photography was completed in March 2008, and it was officially delivered to WB right before Christmas 2008. A March 2009 release was briefly considered, but a fall 2009 release was always a better fit."
♦"We shot in Massachusetts and Virginia. The film takes place predominantly in Virginia, 1976."
♦"The running time is 1 hour 55 minutes long, including end credits. ..."
♦"There is more than 300 visual effects shots, which required eight months of post-production. ..."
♦"Win Butler, Regine Chassagne (of Arcade Fire) and Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy, frequent collaborator with Arcade Fire) recorded more than 80 minutes of score for the film."
♦"Here is a list of artists whose songs appear in the film: Grateful Dead, Derek & The Dominos, Wilson Pickett, The Marshall Tucker Band, Scott Walker."
The official Web site will go live this summer.
Kelly added: "This is my most personal film to date, and I'm very proud of how it turned out."
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.quietearth.us%2Fimg%2Ft%2Fthebox.jpg&hash=782cb43502aa5d0ef15d770bc1d547ce62452450)
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fshocktillyoudrop.com%2Fnextraimages%2Ftheboxposter.jpg&hash=ffae1bbaea3abe66979a81271e63790fc8fa0e9e)
ADMIN EDIT: to include larger poster.
Put a Brett Ratner in Richard Kelly. He's Michael Bay'ed.
Come on Stefen, that was a bit mean.
Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly reveals just what's in The Box
Source: SciFi Wire
Richard Matheson's 1970 short story "Button, Button" was simplicity itself. A box with a red button under a glass dome arrives on the doorstep of a New York couple, Arthur and Norma Lewis, followed shortly by a mysterious man, Mr. Steward, who tells them that if they press the button, they will receive $50,000. But someone they don't know will die.
The moral and ethical quandary could not be more naked. If it were that easy, would you do it?
In the course of the very brief story—only a few pages in an anthology of Matheson's work—the button gets pressed, and the twist ending highlights the true cost of shirking moral responsibility for material gain.
That diamond-like metaphor for our modern world so captured the imagination of filmmaker Richard Kelly that he chose to use it as the point of departure for his upcoming feature film The Box, a much more grounded, intimate and personal drama after the sci-fi extravaganza of 2007's Southland Tales and his trippy cult debut, 2001's Donnie Darko.
"This science fiction concept that he came up with [was] a crystal-clear statement that this button is going to absolutely cause the death of another human being, [and] it became, to me, something that really warranted further exploration," Kelly said in an interview earlier this month. He added: "I spent several years trying to figure out how to adapt this into a film."
The answer was to use the short story as the first event in a longer, original story that explored who and what was behind the odd little wooden box and how Arthur and Norma could uncover that truth and, perhaps in the process, find redemption.
"Are they next?" Kelly said. "Can they survive this? Can they uncover the truth, and can they redeem themselves and save themselves, perhaps? For me, that became the jumping-off point. ... Maybe expanded into a feature where there's a way to present the setup from the short story. It felt like it could be the first act of an entire film, and it felt like something that was sort of asking to be resolved, in my mind. But resolved in a way that hopefully was still very faithful to the spirit of what I believe that Matheson was kind of trying to say in a nutshell: ... that the pushing of the button, ... it's the key to the downfall of man."
Kelly changed a few things: Moved the location, upped the money to $1 million, made Mr. Steward a bit more menacing. But he kept the story in the same period (1976, to be precise), a pre-personal-computer, pre-Internet era in which the box's mysteries could remain plausibly opaque to Arthur and Norma. (Can't just Google "Steward" and "box.")
In seeking a way to flesh out Matheson's story—which was previously adapted as an episode of the 1985 incarnation of The Twilight Zone by Matheson himself (under the pseudonym Logan Swanson)—Kelly went into his own personal history, he said.
"Even though ... it's the first film I've done that's based on someone else's origin material, it is my most personal film, because when you read the short story, Arthur and Norma, it's only six pages, so there's not much time to delve into their backstory and who they are," Kelly said. "And I decided, ... since I'm setting this in 1976, and I'm setting it in Richmond, Va., where I grew up, I thought, 'How am I going to flesh out Arthur and Norma?' And then my instinct was, 'Why don't I base them on my parents?'"
The married couple in The Box share the same biography as Kelly's parents: Arthur works at NASA on the Viking Mars probe, as did Kelly's father; Norma is a schoolteacher from Texas, like Kelly's mother. The film's stars, Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, spent time with Kelly's folks, with Diaz even adopting the Texas twang of Kelly's mom.
Kelly also gave the couple a son. "The kid, I guess, is kind of me," he said. "I had an older brother, so I wasn't a single child, and I was barely 1 year old in 1976, but the kid is 10 or 11, so it became, all of a sudden, this really personal thing. ... It become a way for me to sort of expand and interpret Matheson's story but also make it very personal to me. And it kind of helped me ... bring some ... degree of authenticity to the story, in the sense [that it] feels like part of the story really happened, in a weird way. ... Because the love story part of it really happened."
The Box also stars Frank Langella as the mysterious Mr. Steward. It opens Oct. 30. Kelly and his stars will be bringing the film to Comic-Con International next month as part of the Warner Brothers panel.
Trailer here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk37Iu5Zy4s)
Uh.... no. No, I think not.
Uh, yes. I think so. I've been reading alot about this film and I guess I'm alone but I really want to see this terribly bad.
Richard Kelly on 'The Box': 'It's the most personal film' he's made
Source: Los Angeles Times
In his relatively brief career, writer-director Richard Kelly has seen plenty of controversy. His 2001 debut, "Donnie Darko," played the Sundance Film Festival, flopped at the box office and then went on to find a massive and loyal cult audience on home video (not to mention bolster the career of star Jake Gyllenhaal). His follow-up, "Southland Tales," was a wild, sprawling narrative set in a futuristic version of Los Angeles that drew a decidedly mixed reaction when an early cut screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006; it was more than a year later before the movie saw a very limited release in the U.S.
Now, the Virginia-born filmmaker has crafted what might be his most conventional outing yet, the Warner Bros. thriller "The Box." Based on the short story "Button, Button" by Richard Matheson, Cameron Diaz and James Marsden star as a married couple who receive a strange visit from a man, Mr. Steward (Frank Langella) bearing a fairly nondescript-looking contraption. He tells them that if they press the button on top of the unit, they will receive $1 million, but a stranger will die.
Just before Kelly debuted new footage at Comic-Con on Friday, he told Hero Complex contributor Gina McIntyre in an interview that "The Box" is the most personal of all his films. It opens Oct. 30.
What made you want to adapt this particular Richard Matheson short story?
This story just stuck with me. I read it as a kid and I went and optioned it about six years ago from Mr. Matheson himself. I wanted to know who Mr. Steward was. Why does he show up with this button unit? Who does he work for? Why is he doing this to people? What does it all mean? Like a kid in Sunday school, I had all these questions and I felt like I wanted to be the guy to have a crack at answering some of those questions and playing this six-page short story out. The short story is the framework for Act 1, then Act 2 and Act 3 become all about Arthur and Norma [Marsden and Diaz] and their journey of redemption and discovery and salvation, dealing with the consequences of having pushed this button and then discovering why have they been chosen.
How was it to work with material that was originally created by someone else?
This is the first time I've made a film that isn't a 100% original screenplay, but I feel OK with it because it was only six pages long and it was almost begging to be revisited. It's such a tantalizing concept that it sort of deserves feature-length treatment. It warranted that -- if anything I just wanted to make sure to kind of thoroughly investigate the premise and really do it properly. It took a while to figure that out. Sometimes you find that the best way to go about something is to go back to your family. I imagined what if this were my parents. What if my parents got this button unit back in Virginia in 1976 and my dad having worked at NASA. I thought about NASA and the nature of the experiment, the government and everything that exists in that area of Virginia in terms of the CIA, the FBI in northern Virginia, all that infrastructure there. All of a sudden it started to click in my mind and become something really interesting and complex, a big kind of conspiracy.
You were a writer-director and producer on this film. How important is for you to have that kind of creative control?
I'm definitely a control freak. To do your job properly as a director you have to be a control freak, so I'm really happy to be a part of all those processes. If I'm ever lucky enough to find someone else's screenplay that I really identify with and would want to direct, I'm sure I would always do a little bit of rewriting of it, just because that's the nature of my control-freakishness. I'm getting more open to doing other stories and other people's stories, but at the same time I'm writing two original screenplays right now. I feel like I need to be the person controlling the idea.
Will one of those two scripts be your next project?
I hope so. I've got my new script done.
Can you reveal any details about that completed script?
It's a thriller and it's about 35% motion capture. To be able to create a world from scratch is an exciting idea and seeing what all these amazing filmmakers like Jim Cameron and [Robert] Zemeckis and Peter Jackson -- I'd love to be able to use some of the tools that they're pioneering. That would be really exciting for me.
After everything that happened with "Southland Tales," was there less pressure on you with this film?
The third film is maybe a little easier than the second one. I didn't make my life so difficult with this one as to try to do something so incredibly ambitious. "Southland Tales" was a huge challenge. This was also a challenge, but it's a much simpler story with three characters and certainly something that's quite a bit more commercial in terms of a studio being able to market and release it. So there was less pressure in that. It was great to have a studio on board from the beginning. That was a relief.
You didn't have any problems working within the studio system?
It actually was a pretty easy experience making the film with the studio. I actually kind of enjoyed it, just the security of knowing it's going to get release, that you have them have a vested interest from the beginning. I got to make exactly the film I wanted. "Southland Tales" was such an ambitious film, just getting it finished. I knew that after Cannes it was going to be a very small release with no marketing money and I was just grateful that Sony gave me some more money to finish the visual effects. The cut wasn't finished at Cannes. We had so much unfinished visual effects work to make stuff look right. It was frustrating, it was difficult, but I bit off a lot, and it took me a long time to chew it. I'm so proud of what we accomplished with that film. If anything I would love to be able to revisit it down the road, do a director's cut, maybe one day when I'm in my 40s, who knows. It feels good to have the third film done because maybe the first act of my career is sort of over and I can move into the second act. In the same way, "The Box" is my first grownup film. The first two were certainly adolescent in the sense of being really provocative and aggressively unconventional. Now, "The Box" is a much more conventional story, but I will say it still is idiosyncratic. I don't feel like I've sold out or watered myself down. I still feel like it has my sensibility. It's the most personal film of all the three ironically.
Another Move for The Box
Source: ShockTillYouDrop
Warner Bros. has pushed Richard Kelly's thriller The Box to November 6th. Perhaps it's because The Wolfman recently scampered out of that date? The Box, starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, was originally set to debut on October 30th after multiple release date shifts. On that date it was all alone, genre-wise. Now it'll compete at the box office with Universal's The Fourth Kind with Milla Jovovich.
Quote from: Stefen on April 06, 2009, 07:46:31 PM
Put a Brett Ratner in Richard Kelly. He's Michael Bay'ed.
Banner?
Richard Kelly explains his weird film The Box to us
Source: SciFi Wire
Filmmaker Richard Kelly has had a weird career: He hit it big as a first-time movie director with the cult smash Donnie Darko, then went large with an epic follow-up, Southland Tales, which flopped despite its grand ambitions. So for his next act? A more modest sci-fi thriller, The Box, based on Richard Matheson's 1970 short story "Button, Button."
The story's not very long: Six pages in a recent anthology. It's also simplicity itself: A box with a red button under a glass dome arrives on the doorstep of a New York couple, Arthur and Norma Lewis, followed shortly by a mysterious man, Mr. Steward, who tells them that if they press the button, they will receive $50,000. But someone they don't know will die.
The moral and ethical quandary could not be more naked. If it were that easy, would you do it?
For Kelly's feature film, he had to expand the story quite a bit.
"This science fiction concept that he came up with [was] a crystal-clear statement that this button is going to absolutely cause the death of another human being, [and] it became, to me, something that really warranted further exploration," Kelly told us in an exclusive interview in June. He added: "I spent several years trying to figure out how to adapt this into a film."
The answer was to use the short story as the first event in a longer, original story that explored who and what was behind the odd little wooden box and how Arthur and Norma could uncover that truth and perhaps in the process find redemption.
"Are they next?" Kelly said. "Can they survive this? Can they uncover the truth, and can they redeem themselves and save themselves, perhaps? For me, that became the jumping-off point. ... Maybe expanded into a feature where there's a way to present the setup from the short story. It felt like it could be the first act of an entire film, and it felt like something that was sort of asking to be resolved, in my mind. But resolved in a way that hopefully was still very faithful to the spirit of what I believe that Matheson was kind of trying to say in a nutshell: ... that the pushing of the button, ... it's the key to the downfall of man."
Kelly changed a few things: Moved the location, upped the money to $1 million, made Mr. Steward a bit more menacing. But he kept the story in the same period (1976, to be precise), a pre-personal-computer, pre-Internet era in which the box's mysteries could remain plausibly opaque to Arthur and Norma. (Can't just Google "Steward" and "box.")
In seeking a way to flesh out Matheson's story—which was previously adapted as an episode of the 1985 incarnation of "The Twilight Zone" by Matheson himself (under the pseudonym Logan Swanson)—Kelly went into his own personal history, he said.
"Even though ... it's the first film I've done that's based on someone else's original material, it is my most personal film, because when you read the short story, Arthur and Norma, it's only six pages, so there's not much time to delve into their backstory and who they are," Kelly said. "And I decided, ... since I'm setting this in 1976, and I'm setting it in Richmond, Va., where I grew up, I thought, 'How am I going to flesh out Arthur and Norma?' And then my instinct was, 'Why don't I base them on my parents?'"
Cameron Diaz plays Norma Lewis, and X-Men's James Marsden plays her husband, Arthur. "The Box" also stars Frank Langella as the mysterious Mr. Steward.
Norma and Arthur share the same biography as Kelly's parents: Arthur works at NASA on the Viking Mars probe, as did Kelly's father; Norma is a schoolteacher from Texas, like Kelly's mother. Diaz and Marsden spent time with Kelly's folks, with Diaz even adopting the Texas twang of Kelly's mom.
Falling somewhere inbetween the promising Donnie Darko and the disasterous Southland Tales, The Box is essentially a very stylish bad movie. After the epic failure of Southland Tales, writer/director Kelly needed to make a film that would appeal to a wide enough audience to rescue his career and it appeared that The Box would be it. After seeing it I can say it's just as idiosyncratic as his previous work with many familiar science fiction elements popping up. Based on the short story "Button Button", the film plays like an episode of The Twilight Zone (for which the story was previously adapted) as directed by Dario Argento. There was a lot to admire in this film, Frank Langella is great, as is his makeup, there are some genuine scares and paranoid creepiness but the film also captured a sort of 70's cheese so accurately it was hard to take seriously (and the film wanted to be taken seriously.)
That actually makes me want to see it.
Quote from: RegularKarate on November 06, 2009, 03:10:50 PM
That actually makes me want to see it.
Yeah I don't want to knock the movie and I'm not rooting for Kelly to fail. I appreciate that it's different and clearly Kelly is striving for greatness. It just doesn't entirely work and comes off a little campy.
Richard Kelly Talks The Box
Donnie Darko filmmaker talks about his latest.
Source: IGN
WARNING: There are some vague spoilers in the following interview with filmmaker Richard Kelly about the conclusion of The Box. Anybody who has yet to experience the film may want to check back after they've seen it...
That said, Kelly is certainly no stranger to creating enigmatic films that are heavy in tone and filled with mystery. While The Box is, at least outwardly, his most commercial film, it's a strange tale that even Kelly admits requires a little digging to figure out. A married couple, Arthur and Norma, are offered a horrifying choice -- push a button that will cause the death of a stranger and received a million dollars. But adapted from a story that was originally only a few pages long, how exactly does one craft a tense, suspenseful mystery?
"I didn't want to just do a half-ass adaptation...I wanted to thoroughly explore the mystery," says Kelly. "The short story is only six pages. It's very cryptic. You don't know who Mr. Steward is, or who he works for, or why they built the button. I desperately wanted to know more. But there was one line where they do ask about who he works for and he says, 'I can assure you that the organization is large and international in scope.' Perhaps it's our government tied to something beyond our world, like a conspiracy film. And then it's just about thinking of NASA and Viking and 1976 and the NSA and the CIA and all those governmental power structures in one place. And so it becomes this story about a married couple who are exposed to this massive international, inter-galactic conspiracy, or experiment...."
Of course, Kelly's never been one for giving too much information, and for as possible as it may be to piece together a reasonable explanation behind the mystery, the writer/director certainly never hands it to you.
"It's a very delicate process when you're editing a film to maintain the most essential information," replies Kelly to the point. "I feel that we were able to hit the right balance in the sense that we provided suspenseful narrative exposition, but also to leave clues along the way – not only for Arthur and Norma to discover, but for the audience to discover. Ultimately, at the end of the day, the film does come back to a spiritual place where it comes down to a husband, a wife and a gun. And a massive decision that must be made. All the layers hopefully fall back into your memory and you're left with an emotionally naked reality."
But thereis a solution insists Kelly, who even goes so far as to name it as we speak.
"I feel like I have this entire movie figured out. In my mind, I think it's a higher intelligence ultimately conducting a test before Earth is disposed of. At the same time, it's about trying to not present the material by telegraphing everything. Otherwise, you sacrifice at lot of the suspense. A movie being a couple steps ahead of you keeps you searching around every corner."
The film's most obvious criticism, however, is that the moral test of whether or not to push the button at the center of the story is only ever truly about morality if the couple believes in the consequences. Which they don't. So how, then, in Kelly's mind, does the premise stay strong?
"Norma pushes the button almost because her husband convinces her that there's no technology that could ever, ever physically cause another person's death," muses the director. "Certainly, we would never be accountable in a court of law. She pushes it almost out of curiosity or to call the bluff on this person, or this creature. It doesn't become a true moral test until Act Two and Act Three when the experiment goes to an entirely new level...And the end becomes the ultimate moral test that leaves the audience questioning...Because they've both been baptized in this supernatural liquid of a sort; they've both been exposed to some sort of higher consciousness, and that gives them the courage, or the faith, to consider pulling the trigger at the end."
Audiences will no doubt wonder if Frank Langella's turn as Mr. Steward holds any sympathy for his victims, as the middle portion of the film can be read as something of a warning between this mysterious figure and the couple whose lives he's affecting.
"I think he's rooting for them," says Kelly boldly. "I think he likes them. I think he's a little bummed out by the fact that they were somehow selected, but at the same time, his employers are selecting couples who are the cream of the crop – the best, nicest, most decent people. He has a crummy job he has to do, but at the same time, I think he gives them special treatment by the end of the film. He tries to give them hints."
Finally, in perhaps the most spoiler-filled portion of the conversation, Kelly discusses the film's end sequence – in which another couple's decision seems, as if by magic, to effect what ultimately happens between Norma and Arthur.
"It's a challenging question for me, still. It makes you wonder what the relationship is between the button on the trigger of the gun. Is there, in fact, some magic happening when that button presses that has an effect, has a purpose? You wonder about the chicken and the egg. Which came first? These are questions that ultimately have everything to do with cause and effect, with yin and yang, with the co-dependence of events that take place far away, in different states. One couple is in Massachusetts, one is in Virginia. I don't necessarily have an answer to that. But it was important for us to show the symmetry of events. It makes you think about free will and cause and effect and the magic of the button unit. At the end of the day, it was a much more dramatic, tension-filled way of presenting the conclusion. It tries to prove to the audience that the button unit has a higher intelligence somewhere buried inside of it."
"A bit muddled, a bit boring, bizarre and ambitious."
That was my reaction to this film. It also can be attributed to everything Kelly has made so far, and is probably a fair summation of whatever project he does next. Also, like Kelly's previous films, his influences are on full display. He seems to appropriate visual and emotional cues from Lynch and Kubrick, which are admirable, but only remind you that Kelly isn't in their league.
What Kelly does have a command of - in this and in Donnie Darko - is an impeccably detailed sense of the suburbs. He is really great at detailing specific, somewhat homogenized, neighborhoods with obvious affection without miring it in nostalgia. The fact that it takes place in a Virginian suburb full of NASA and Government employees is almost more interest than any metaphysical turn the plot could take.
It also reminded me a lot of Proyas' Knowing... which, I guess is appropriate considering Kelly's early involvement in that project. There's nothing as visually arresting here as there was in that film... but it is another film that subverts it's genre in unexpected directions and is more ambitious than you might expect.
Also, the Win Butler/Regine Chassagne score is pretty terrific. Classic and restrained... not what I expected.
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F7.media.tumblr.com%2Ftumblr_kswviqLvGf1qappjoo1_500.jpg&hash=a422fee5aaf637c0453d9d774c2e6a2fed49f256)
Perfection. :yabbse-smiley:
Quote from: john on November 06, 2009, 09:05:12 PM
Also, the Win Butler/Regine Chassagne score is pretty terrific. Classic and restrained... not what I expected.
I forgot about this. Are there any song-y songs (aka something you'd expect from Arcade Fire)?
'The Box': The movie audiences truly love to hate
Source: Los Angeles Times
It's no secret that "The Box" is a flop. The Cameron Diaz-starring horror thriller, released by Warner Bros. last weekend, barely eked out $7.5 million at the box office, which alone ensures that it only has one way to go (down) in terms of its box-office future.
But the real shocker is the grade it received from CinemaScore, the Las Vegas-based market research company that compiles Friday-night audience reaction to all of Hollywood's big new movie releases. The CinemaScore grade matters, since it's culled not from a bunch of snooty critics but from real paying moviegoers. Even more importantly, there's a very strong correlation between the grade a film gets and its future commercial prospects. An A signals a long happy life while even a C is pretty much of a death sentence.
Even though "The Box" got a not entirely embarrassing 48 from Rotten Tomatoes, the film has gone where few movies have ever gone before -- it earned a big fat F from CinemaScore. In fact, of the 33 demographic categories measured by the service, "The Box" got an F in 29 of the 33 -- and earned a D-minus in three of the four others. Males and females under 18 gave it an F as did 25-and-up males and 35-and-up females and virtually everyone in between. Its only demographic "sweet spot" was with 25-34 and 35-49 men, who gave it a D-minus.
I called up Ed Mintz, who runs CinemaScore, to ask if he's ever seen a movie get such bad grades. "Not in a while," he says. "People really thought this was a stinker." The only three movies he could recall that scored as many Fs were all basically horror thrillers: "The Bug," a 2006 Ashley Judd horror film; "Wolf Creek," a 2005 backpackers-in-peril thriller; and "Darkness," a 2002 haunted house scarefest.
Since Mintz actually saw the film, I asked him why audiences hated it so much. Simple, he said. They hated the ending. It turns out that the film's ostensible storyline -- a married couple are given a box containing a button that, if pushed, will bring you a million dollars but simultaneously take a stranger's life -- was just the beginning when it came to the film's assortment of horrible moral choices. Since thousands of unhappy people have already Twittered about the movie's bizarre finale, I don't think I'm giving away any state secrets to say that Diaz -- who should begin a serious reappraisal of her career choices right now -- doesn't make it to the end of the film.
"It's like a horror movie version of 'Sophie's Choice,' " Mintz says. "I have to admit that I was sitting there, going 'That's the choice? They're going to kill off a movie star? Who'd want to pay $10 to see that?' I'd love to hear how they thought they were going to get good word-of-mouth from that ending. But that's the reason why the movie got an F. The public acted in vengeance. They got angry about where the story went and the grade definitely reflects that anger."
Quote from: bigideas on November 10, 2009, 03:58:18 PM
Quote from: john on November 06, 2009, 09:05:12 PM
Also, the Win Butler/Regine Chassagne score is pretty terrific. Classic and restrained... not what I expected.
I forgot about this. Are there any song-y songs (aka something you'd expect from Arcade Fire)?
Not at all. In fact, there's nothing about the score that would lead an unfamiliar viewer to presume Arcade Fire had anything to do with it.
It's still quite good, though.
the three-arcade-fire-members score is a perfect bernard herrmann homage. by far the best part of this movie, which is a fucking mess but i found myself entertained. kelly's naive perspective and "idiosyncrasies"--none of which are of any particular worth but admirable for being uninhibitedly and sincerely expressed--are on full display, packaged in a very glossy 70s pastiche that when grouped with the film's narrative grandstanding and self-induction into the tradition of Great Science Fiction Films (note: this does not mean i consider it to be anywhere near worthy of said title) make for a compulsively watchable movie.