The Box started out as a six-page short story published in 1970 and was later adapted for a episode of the New Twilight Zone. But in re-working this sci-fi morality tale for the big screen, director Richard Kelly suggests that he is aiming more for a throwback than an update.
The basic story is quite simple. A disfigured stranger gives a suburban couple a mysterious box. Inside the box is a button. If they push it, they get a million dollars, but there's a catch: some person they don't know will die.
In a wide-ranging interview over at AICN, Kelly explains how he fleshed out the plot a bit, adding a nefarious corporation and some sort of connection to NASA's Viking program to the background. Mainly though, he talks about how he tried to give it more depth by recreating the look and feel of the 1970s – all the way down to the wallpaper. And then, to make it personal, he added his parents.
He used them and even their accents as a model for the couple in the movie played by James Marsden and Cameron Diaz. Things got a little weird though when he brought them on set to watch the filming:
It's very meta. You have my parents feeling like they're in a Twilight Zone episode watching James Marsden and Cameron Diaz portray very personal, autobiographical things about their life with their son directing it in this amazing Richard Matheson story that we've all grown up with.
More details are sure to be coming soon, with the first trailer for The Box debuting in the next week or so and move footage scheduled to be shown at Comic-Con in late July.