Unless you're making "Transformers 3" or "Iron Man 2," every movie in Hollywood is a gamble in one way or another. But some gambles are more intriguing than others, like the one Lionsgate recently announced teaming Russell Crowe and Paul Haggis.
The two Oscar winners have joined forces on "The Next Three Days," a Haggis-directed adaptation of the 2008 French film "Pour Elle" that begins production in Pittsburgh in late September.
After all, both actor and filmmaker are considerable talents, but talents with erratic track records. Crowe almost always delivers a strong performance -- as he did in such recent films as "American Gangster" and "3:10 to Yuma" (the latter released by Lionsgate). But his last two films, "Body of Lies" and "State of Play," were box-office duds. Haggis is one of Hollywood's go-to screenwriters, having worked on the last twoBond films. But since his best picture Oscar win with "Crash" (also a Lionsgate film), he's struggled as a filmmaker, directing the admirable-but-little-seen "In the Valley of Elah" and creating "The Black Donnellys," a short-lived TV flop.
So it seemed intriguing to me to read that Lionsgate, which has largely been focusing lately on genre thrillers and horror movies (along with its Tyler Perry films), was willing to greenlight a movie that looked exactly like the kind of picture that Hollywood studios shun these days: a serious character-driven drama. After all, it was Haggis himself who called the picture an exploration of the deeper themes of faith and belief, describing the deeper theme thusly: "Would you save the woman you loved if you knew that by doing so, you would turn into a man that a woman could no longer love?" (Sounds like something Graham Greene might write.)
It sounds undeniably dramatically provocative. But is it commercial? Ask any screenwriter: At most of today's studios, if you come in and pitch a film about faith and belief, the production exec is most likely to respond by saying, "Could the faith and belief part come after we got to see Megan Fox and Robert Pattinson fight off a giant winged alien invader for about an hour?" So I called up Lionsgate Motion Picture Group President Joe Drake, who tried to put the latest studio deal in perspective.
