Having worked with Doug Liman before, and work experiences with both studios behind his film “Jumper” Fox and New Regency, I’m very interested in seeing how the film fares.

I’ve had my doubts about this project ever since it was in development because to me – the idea of teleportation – seems like a feature length epsiode of “My Secret Identity” and doesn’t really work for me. But I’m not really a sci-fi guy.

Neither is Doug Liman for that matter. The director, who hails fom Manhattan and graduated Brown University is 42-years-old. He also is rumored by sources who know him well to have some level of Asperger syndrome – which, to my understanding is like a form of autism which affects social interaction. No source can confirm whether there is any merit to this rumor, but from some limited personal experiences with the director as well as several anecdotes about his off-kilter behavior in social situations from his collaborators leads me to believe that there might be a grain of truth there…

The history of Doug Liman is quite well known.  He first achived success with 1996’s “Swingers” which starred Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau. The movie was a huge financial hit and Liman was rewarded with a next project, but rumors have surfaced in the past few years that Favreau and Vaughn really deserve a lot more credit for the project’s success as a film than does Liman.

After “Swingers” came “Go” – a modest success, but enough to get Liman on board to direct 2002’s “The Bourne Identity” for Universal. That film’s production was a nightmare with producer Frank Marshall later claiming that he had to step in several times to ensure it was completed and taking much of the credit for working against director Liman to wrap the production up. Since that film, Liman has only produced films in the “Bourne” series because of bad-blood that was built up against him by Marshall and Universal.

With “Bourne” as a major success under his belt, Liman began to produce and direct TV pilots and was on-board “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” which would star Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Liman chum Vince Vaughn in a supporting role. The film also had Oscar winning writer Akiva Goldsman on board as producer. The production of “Smith” went substantially over-budget and ran over with regard to production days losing Brad Pitt to “Ocean’s 12” in the middle because of Regency’s gamble to move forward with the film and Pitt despite that commitment and not being realistic about the amount of days needed.

After Pitt returned to the film (and to the cast that would include the future wife of his children) production rumors about Jolie’s dislike for Liman and his directing style reverberated around town (muffled of course by the more interesting tabloid rumors about Pitt and Jolie’s love lives.)

“Mr. & Mrs. Smith” opened to over $50 million dollars in its opening frame and went on to gross nearly $500 million worldwide. A major success, but one that didn’t come easily. With much of the credit in Century City being given to Pitt, Jolie, the tabloids and Akiva Goldsman. Nobody was singing Liman’s praises. Actually, I do remember some water-cooler moments where the director’s name was used as a punchline.

I suppose bad experiences didn’t deter the folks at New Regency who hired Liman to direct their next big-budget venture “Jumper.” Liman and the executives insisted on finding an unknown actor to carry the film and intending to follow the “Harry Potter” business plan of filming multiple films with a young star that they could control and afford. This backfired. Several weeks into production, the actor was fired and Star Wars actor Hayden Christensen was brought in instead to play the role of ‘David Rice.’ The film posed additional questions for Liman, a shoot that required filming in Rome, Tokyo and the Sahara Desert.

In a recent interview with Movie Web Liman retells what drew him to the film “Jumper“:

“I fell in love with the character of David Rice. I fell in love with someone discovering they can teleport, and the first thing they do with it is rob a bank. I loved him for that. In the hands of another filmmaker, that would have been an act that ultimately required some sort of retribution. He is doing unlikable things. In the end, they would have him redeemed. They would turn him into a hero. I actually didn’t want him to change. And I loved him for robbing that bank. “

When addressing the question regarding the casting of Hayden Christensen and Samuel L. Jackson (who also appeared together in the Star Wars films) Liman seems to forget that Hayden was not his first choice, he says:

“I cast Hayden off his performance in Shattered Glass. Just as I had cast Matt Damon for The Bourne Identity off his work in Good Will Hunting. Not the films you would normally turn to in finding your next action hero. But it worked on The Bourne Identity. And this is about taking chances in your career. If it works, it encourages you to take more chances later on. If you ever stop taking changes and start to play it safe, that becomes a very slippery slope. When you never take any chances, you end up becoming a hack.”

If “Jumper” succeeds (the reviews have been awful) than perhaps Liman is no hack himself. In fact, he already has his next project lined up called “Moon” – Liman describes the project thusly:

“It is about a private expedition to colonize the moon. It is science fact. The technology to go to the moon is so old, it sounds like science fiction. It sounds like the future. But the technology is so old, it should be in a museum. This is about a group of people that actually raid the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum and steal the necessary equipment to go to the moon and set up the first lunar colony. Obviously, everything that could go wrong does go wrong.”

Sounds crazy and actually kind of awesome too. I’d watch the movie (just like I’ll be watching “Jumper”) – with Doug Liman as director you never know what’s going to happen. He must just fail once.

“Jumper” opens tonight – Valentine’s Day, February 14th, 2008.

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