It’s done.  It’s in the can.  But we won’t be seeing Richard Kelly’s The Box until November of 2009 with word now out that Warner Brothers have bumped the film back a good long way.  The Box, of course, was meant to be Kelly’s way of proving that he could make a low cost, high yield, commercially successful film after Southland Tales tanked hard at the box office, in much the same way that Aronofsky followed The Fountain with The Wrestler, so any sort of bump back or indication that Warners are losing faith in the film is very disheartening as it could have a huge impact on Kelly’s future career if this film fails.  More and more Kelly is feeling like this generation’s Terry Gilliam to me, a film maker who intrigues lovers of film but whose ideas are too big to be cost effective and who lives just far enough outside the mainstream that Hollywood will never properly support him …

Based on the short story by Richard Matheson, “The Box” stars Cameron Diaz as Norma Lewis and James Marsden as Arthur Lewis, a suburban couple with a young child who receive a simple wooden box as a gift, which bears fatal and irrevocable consequences.  A mysterious stranger, played by Frank Langella, delivers the message that the box promises to bestow upon its owner $1 million with the press of a button.  But, pressing this button will simultaneously cause the death of another human being somewhere in the world, someone they don’t know.  With just 24 hours to have the box in their possession, Norma and Arthur find themselves in the crosshairs of a startling moral dilemma and must face the true nature of their humanity