On style and casting of his upcoming horror film
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 â 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 â 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 â 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 â 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.
Source: Steven Chupnick
