Stephen Gaghan: His script, his movie.
Producer Lynda Obst, whose current film is Someone Like You, couldn't be happier that the director of her next project just won an Oscar.Even if he was rewarded for adapted screenplay.
Stephen Gaghan, who wove together the threads of Traffic, will make his directing debut with another one of his scripts. Abandon is a psychological thriller starring Katie Holmes as a stressed-out college senior whose boyfriend has disappeared. Benjamin Bratt is the newly sober police detective tracking him down.
"It's very different from Traffic," Obst says. "It's not about the drug war, but it has Stephen's sensibility. It's informed by his experience in life." Co-producer Ed Zwick, who also worked on Traffic, originally was going to direct but stepped aside when Gaghan said that he wanted to be behind the camera.
Even on Oscar night, Gaghan didn't abandon his duties on Abandon, which starts shooting in Montreal in two weeks.
Says Obst: "On his way there, he was casting in the car. On his way back, he was casting in the car. At midnight, he sent us a rewrite. Then he went to Montreal the next day. He's focused."
