Making his feature film screenwriting debut, Mark Protosevich conceived the idea for The Cell in 1993 when he decided to combine two of his primary areas of interest, mind-probing and serial killers, together into one project.
Protosevich, a former reader for producer Scott Rudin, traces back his admiration for horror films to his upbringing in Chicago seeing horror films and TV shows such as "Creature Features." "I was obsessed with The Horror of Dracula," he notes, "to the point where, when I was in fourth grade I would pretend at recess that I was a vampire and I got into a lot of trouble. I used to go around and bite people on the neck at lunch. That was the first black mark on my career." As he got older, Protosevich was influenced by a new group of horror films from such noted directors as Wes Craven, George Romero and David Cronenberg. "The idea of horror has been an obsession of mine for along time," he continues. "And I'm very interested in psychology and dreams. The older I got I started to realize the complexities of horror movies. On the surface there's a monster and you get scared, but deep down they're actually very complex stories, dealing with a lot of repressed fears and anxieties. Whether it's the Frankenstein monster or a serial killer, there's something about them that's terrifying because they don't fit in society."
Protosevich had been toying with the idea of doing a serial killer story, but wanted to make sure it was not formulaic or predictable. He didn't think he could improve upon the standard classics like Silence of the Lambs, so he decided to utilize his fascination with nightmares, dreams and fantasy to create a new kind of serial killer story. "I wanted to delve into someone's imagination, someone's mind, because I think fantasies are so much more complex and wild than our daily lives."
With the idea of the killer in place, Protosevich crafted the story of a compassionate female scientist whose specialty is psychotherapy with children, who is then asked to use this advanced technology to go into the mind of a serial killer to find out where he has placed his last victim who has only forty hours to live. "She is asked to do this by the FBI," notes Protosevich. "The lives of her and the FBI agent who becomes involved with her and the killer intersect, and their understanding of the world is changed via this experience."
In fashioning the science fiction elements of the story, Protosevich relied on both real science and speculative fiction in the creation of the Neurological Cartography and Synaptic Transfer System, The Cell's brain-mapping device that, along with the injection of psychotropic drugs, allows one party to enter the mind of another party.
New Line Cinema was actively looking for projects for internationally acclaimed commercial director Tarsem, so when he agreed to The Cell, the film was put on the track to production.
Movie Database
In Theaters
