I’ve added the very first official stills from the upcoming thriller “The Box”! The movie stars Cameron Diaz, James Marsden and Frank Langella, and will hit cinemas sometime in the coming fall. Apart from the four photos, you can also read a brand new interview about the movie below, originally posted in USA Today. A big thanks to S for contributing some of the pictures. What do you think of the look of the movie so far?

Filmmaker Richard Kelly prides himself on thinking so far outside the box that major chunks of the Internet are devoted to deconstructing his intentionally murky movies.

His desire to bewilder has earned him a certified cult classic (2001’s Donnie Darko) and an unmitigated flop (2007’s Southland Tales), but no direct hit.

For his third big-screen feat, the 32-year-old USC film-school grad is not only thinking inside the box. He is actually making The Box, complete with his first major studio (Warner Bros.) and an A-list star (Cameron Diaz) on board.

“God bless Cameron Diaz. The second she signed on, our lives changed in a great way,” Kelly says on location at NASA’s Langley Research Center.

Unlike his previous efforts, the sci-fi-tinged thriller is a breeze to summarize. Its plot hook is inspired by a 1986 Twilight Zone episode that haunted Kelly as a kid: A couple (Diaz and James Marsden) open their door to find a box containing a button. If they push it, they will receive $1 million. The catch? Someone they don’t know will die. “With The Box, I hope to make a more mainstream popcorn film,” Kelly says.

Plus, it’s not so bad when your screen alter egos are played by such talents as Diaz and Marsden.

“I did love Donnie Darko way back when, as did many people,” Diaz says by phone after wrapping her part. “And, like many people, I was trying to figure out what it was trying to say. I think that Richard is just smarter than me.”

While The Box would appear to be a change of pace for the onetime Charlie’s Angel, Diaz, who took a pay cut to play her first mother role, compares Kelly’s film to her other more out-there vehicles.

“It’s one of those rare scripts, like Being John Malkovich and VanillaSky,” she says. “I had never read anything like it before. It’s not just ‘Should I push a button?’ There are so many layers and something very personal to Richard.”

She was glad to meet Kelly’s mother. “She was very generous, and I did speak to her about parts of the story that were personal.” Diaz also gives a thumb’s up to her Chex mix. “It’s very much not the boxed kind. She went old-school.”

Kelly ended with saying “What we are hoping to do is to keep as high a percentage as possible engaged in the story’s suspense. We want this to be a page-turner. A nail-biter. We always try to challenge ourselves. The challenge here is to keep an audience’s attention as the puzzle unfolds.”

Gallery Link
• The Box > Official Stills