Last week, I got a chance to take part in a college conference call with Richard Kelly, the director of The Box, and Cameron Diaz and James Marsden, the two stars of the film. You can read my terribly nerdy review of the film here.
Q: I was wondering if any of you guys had read the short story or seen the “Twilight Zone” episode, which this movie is based on.
James Marsden: Uh, embarrassingly, I never read the short story. Not out of laziness, but because we wanted to focus on our version of what we were doing. But I did see the “Twilight Zone” episode, which… Richard, where are we with that whole mentioning the “Twilight Zone” episode?
Richard Kelly: I’m under the impression that I’m not allowed to mention those words. Legally. But the short story was something that I read when I was young, and it had a huge impression on me, obviously. And I optioned it from Richard Matheson [the original author] and I spent many years trying to figure out how to expand it into a feature film, and here we are. So it was a long journey to get here. The concept of the story was something I felt left a strong, strong footprint in my mind, so to speak.
Cameron Diaz: I agree, my answer’s the same as Jimmy’s [James Marsden’s]. I didn’t read the short story because it was something that I wanted to sort of have in order to focus on our script and how Richard expanded on that concept.