Runaway Jury

Gary Fleder took the job in March 2002, ending a 6 year chain of handovers. Arnon Milchan and Warner Bros. had bought John Grisham’s novel in August 1996 for $8 million; a version set for Joel Schumacher, with Edward Norton, Gwyneth Paltrow and Sean Connery, collapsed in 1997. The decisive change came in 1999, under Alfonso Cuarón. Because the settlement had closed the tobacco litigation and The Insider had just worked that ground, Cuarón, Grisham and the studio moved the defendant from a tobacco company to a gun manufacturer. Readers of the novel watch a different lawsuit. The bargain is offered to both sides by Marlee, from outside the courthouse, not by a juror, so the weight sits on a phone line rather than the trial. Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman met at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1956 and were voted the pair “least likely to succeed”; this was their first film together, and Hackman made only one more. Shooting began in New Orleans in September 2002. A good fit if you want jury selection and the consulting trade behind it laid out step by step, and do not mind a verdict settled in phone calls. Not for anyone expecting the gun industry argument opened evenly to both sides; the story picks a side by the end.